Ending Note (Death of a Japanese Salesman)

Mami Sunada, assistant to director Hirokazu Kore-eda on several of his films, has made a documentary that is a genuine act of love for her father, a retired salesman who is diagnosed as having an incurable cancer and told that he has only a few months to live. With admirable frankness and without lapsing into any kind of sentimentalism, the director records the preparations for his death and her father’s reflections by reading from his diary.