Seven Weeks

The account is set in Ashibetsu, a town in Hokkaido. The season is winter. Mitsuo, the oldest of the family, has died. Relatives come from far away for the funeral. After years the house is full again. Then a woman turns up. The woman is called Nobuko. Nobody knows who she is. With her arrival what was never spoken of is opened. Things about Mitsuo’s past come out. What is told reaches back to the war years. A story the family did not know comes to light. The days after the funeral pass in the town. Falling snow runs through the whole film. Toru Shinagawa and Takako Tokiwa take the leads, with Yumi Adachi also in the cast, in Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Japanese film of 2014.