This film is a record of the first Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. It reflects the various ways the festival was given shape by nascent global changes embodied by Perestroika, the Tiananmen Square massacre, and many other contemporaneous events.

A film about the disappearance of something that seemed as though it would always be there: the long-established Maruhachi Yatarazuke pickling company, a shop that bore a key role in the food culture of Yamagata.

In the northern Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, there is an abundance of cenotes-underground springs that flow into caves. This film tells the story of the people, past and present, whose lives intersect with the cenotes, which are believed to be the connection between this world and the next.

From fin-de-siècle Japan, miscommunication and comical interaction between an ultra-nationalist punk band and a left-wing filmmaker who opposes the Emperor system. Through the odd exchange arises a picture of the Japanese today, desperate to find a place of solid grounding.

The director lives in a small rural town with her dying mother and old grandmother. The serene eye of the camera depicts her mother’s fight with illness.Face to face with the all too real death of her mother, the director takes a hard look at life and death...