The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)

“The first rule in farming is that you are never to hope for an easy way. The land demands your effort.” The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin), the second feature from directors C.W. Winter and Anders Edström, is an eight-hour fiction shot for a total of 27 weeks, over a period of 14 months, in a village of 47 inhabitants in the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It is a geographic description of the work and non-work of a farmer. A portrait, over five seasons, of a family, of a terrain, of a soundscape, and of duration itself. It is a film that takes the time to spend time and hear people out. A film-as-adaptive-landscape. A georgic in five books featuring a performance by Tayoko Shiojiri that binds fiction and actual bereavement into a heartbreaking indeterminability. (Berlinale)