Gassan

Directed by Shinji Sōmai

With Akira Emoto

Mount Gassan has been a pilgrimage site for millennia, feared and venerated as the “mountain of the dead”. One summer, a man finds refuge in the shrine nestling in a hollow of the mountain. He has a mystical experience in which he wanders on the frontiers between life and death. The actor, Akira Emoto, gives a reading of a unique work, recounting the experience of the errant writer, Atsushi Mori. Using a simple yet sumptuous pictorial treatment, Sômai takes this piece of literature back to the beauty of the natural surroundings that spawned it. This original television documentary is a true cinematic object: a modest pedagogical tool, an artisanal and modern work.