The Witch of the West Is Dead

Mai is a girl of thirteen. She has asthma. She refuses to go to school. Her parents send her to the countryside for a while. Her grandmother lives there. The woman is English by birth. She keeps her house and her garden in her own order. Mai decides that she is a witch. She asks her for lessons in witchcraft. The grandmother goes along with the game. But what she teaches is something else. She teaches her to rise early and to do her own work. Working in the garden is one of the lessons. Mai changes little by little. She begins to take pleasure in ordinary life. Mayu Takahashi and Yuichi Kimura appear in the one hundred fifteen minute film, a Japanese production Shunichi Nagasaki finished in 2008.