Departures (2008)

I went to see this last fall with Jenny and Steve at the Second Friday Film Series at First Presbyterian Church. An Academy Award winner for Best Foregin Language Film, this story takes place in Japan and tells about an unemployed cellist who applies for a job in the travel industry and ends up as an apprentice to an undertaker of sorts who is desparate to train someone to take over his business. The young man endures a difficult passage training in the art of preparing the dead for the next life, but the experience opens up his life to love and reconnection with the father he lost contact with.