Original subtitles

Here comes the boat.

You are inside that boat.

What a quiet water. How cold it is.

You haven’t touched it yet.

Am I still asleep?

Sleep, sleep a little longer.

I see, far away, the great eyelids of the sleeping city.

Invisible hands weave the city.

You can wake up now.

Look at these boats. They have also just arrived.

I will come for them later.

Where are we?

Everything is you. You only see yourself.

You sail over you, inside you.

Wet lights run down my throat.

Lights inside my veins.

Sowing the light.

The murmur of colors.

What do you understand by color?

Color is the place where our brain and the universe meet.

Color is another way of gathering silence.

The colors are parallel birds.

And what is the visible for you?

The visible is an ornament of the invisible.

Because the invisible is not the denial of the visible, but its goal.

The gaze is thought without form.

When I knew my time was running out.

That you were coming to take me away.

I got angry and began to return everything I had looked at.

So I returned the sea to the sea, the heaven to the heaven,

the faces to the bodies, and the shadows to the trees.

Look at this city in front of you.

A gaze net holds the world together.

Doesn't let it fall.

How many people at the station!

Who am I of all of them?

You are all of them. I already told you.

Come, run, get on the elevator.

High at the top the whole garden is moon.

Where there is danger, what saves grows.

Who are you?

I am the bent creature

that asks the night

the secret of silence.

What do you think about me?

Do you think I help at all?

Does Death help you at all?

Life draws a tree and Death draws another.

Life draws a nest and Death copies it.

Life draws a bird So that it live in the nest.

And then Death immediately draws another bird.

One shadow does not make the whole night.

I have a black bird flying at night.

And flying by day I have an empty bird.

In my hand autumn eats its leaf.

In your hand, you say.

But today, Death, you don’t have the same form.

We should have redefined you.

Sometimes, just before bringing you here with me, I hear beautiful words from you.

I like the tradition you have in Japan of jisei no ku: farewell poem.

The truth emerges when you look me in the face.

Why can't you understand this?

The trip is long. Do you want me to read you some?

Please.

Most of the poems are by death row inmates from your country.

How sad to use death as justice.

This is by Masashi: in 1974 he planted a bomb in protest against the Vietnam War.

I took eight dead men from there.

This is his farewell before being hanged:

Revolutionary song, I sing it quietly. Clear in times of rain.

Kooyo.

Also sentenced to death at the age of 28:

Clear winter sky! I have nowhere to hold on.

Uichi, also sentenced to death and hanged:

Execution tomorrow; I even out the nails by cutting them, spring night.

Shoodoo, hanged at the age of 63:

The night is long; the sound of water says what I think.

Bokuisui, also hanged in 1914:

A word of farewell? Melting snow doesn't smell like anything.

Hoomei, executed at 39:

My daughter’s name, I write it and erase it, long night.

Fuuru, executed at the age of 27:

Winter twilight. Desire to love anyone.

Gozan, hanged.

Snow that yesterday was a shower of petals is water again.

Koha, hanged:

I put down the brush. I'm going to talk to the moon face to face.

Sofu, hanged:

Festival of Souls. Yesterday hosting them, today mere guest.

Michikaze, hanged:

I wear light clothes today to travel to a world unknown.

Nearing the end, my friend.

The magnet taking you now in the flight of consumed embers.

A heart that no longer beats in unison with life.

Hear them join.

Words to words, no word.

Steps to steps, one by one.

of smoke to mouth of smoke.

Wait, breath crystal, your unshakable testimony.

Towards us and away from us and towards us.

A man turns up. “Come in”, you say”, “come in, come in”.

The Sower of Stars

For Ares & Julia

A film by

Sound design

Voices

Edition + VFX Production + Art Direction

Text quotes Haikus in the death row

Gratitude