Please note that the Dec. 8 screening will take place at Japan Society.

Yoshida came out of his feature filmmaking retirement with this typically idiosyncratic meditation on what was, at the time, a taboo topic: euthanasia. A Promise examines the situation of the elderly as they try to hang onto a shred of their own dignity while awaiting the end of their lives. Rentarō Mikuni (who appeared in Yoshida’s earlier A Story Written with Water) stars as a dementia-afflicted widower who confesses to having killed his wife; Yoshida then takes us back, with immense restraint and profound moral sensitivity, to the events that lead up to her death, arriving at a devastating image of human mortality. Featuring music by Haruomi Hosono (of Yellow Magic Orchestra). Print courtesy of the Japan Foundation.