“I heard many voices calling out to me.”
In his late works, Nobuhiko Obayashi became a very keen and critical observer of his home country, its society and politics, posing the question whether they had actually learned anything from the past. “Casting Blossoms to the Sky” is the first movie in what is now considered a trilogy of anti-war features, with “Seven Weeks” (2014) and “Hanagatami” (2017) being the other parts. Following his visual and narrative approach of combining layers of dream, reality and time, Obayashi focuses on several incidents and experiences of a woman traveling to Nagaoka, a city famous for its fireworks tradition, but also a place which may hold the key in understanding the present as well as the possible future of Japan.
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As a newspaper journalist, Reiko Endo (Yasuko Matsuyuki) has always been interested in the history of places, such as Nagaoka. After the earthquake …