The Departure

The film follows Ittetsu Nemoto, a former punk-turned-Buddhist-priest in Japan. Ittetsu has made a career out of helping suicidal people find reasons to live, a work that has come increasingly at the cost of his own family and health, as he refuses to draw lines between those he counsels and himself. The picture follows Nemoto at a crossroads, when his growing self-destructive tendencies lead him to confront the same question his patients ask him: "What makes life worth living?"

'The Departure' is the second documentary film by award-winning director Lana Wilson ('After Tiller'), and a poetic and deeply moving film that contemplates death as a way of understanding better how we should live.