Search Film, Company, People...

A CHORUS OF ANGELS

KITA NO KANARIATACHI

By Junji SAKAMOTO

TOEI COMPANY, LTD. - as SALES All rights, World

Drama - Completed 2012

Haru, a former junior high-school teacher, visits 6 of her students who have grown up and now in their late 20s, to let them find out the truth of the fatal accident happened 20 years ago.

- Year of production
- 2012
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- JAPAN
- Languages
- JAPANESE
- Budget
- 10 - 25 M$
- Duration
- 122 mn
- Director(s)
- Junji SAKAMOTO
- Writer(s)
- Machiko NASU
- Cast
- Sayuri YOSHINAGA, Aoi MIYAZAKI, Ryuhei MATSUDA, Hikari MITSUSHIMA, Mirai MORIYAMA, Eiko KOIKE, Ryo KATSUJI, Toru NAKAMURA
- Synopsis
- A teacher educates six students on Japan’s northernmost remote island
  Twenty years later, a chorus of angels resurrects distant memories
  
  A teacher, Kawashima Haru (Yoshinaga Sayuri), arrives on a remote island, north of Hokkaido. She has accompanied her husband, Yukio (Shibata Kyohei), to become the teacher of six students (who grow up to be played by Moriyama Mira, Mishima Hikari, Katsuchi Ryo, Miyazaki Aoi, Koike Eiko and Matsuda Ryuhei).
  
  Once Haru discovers the children’s beautiful singing voices, she brightens their spirits by leading them in a chorus. Smiles now break out on the faces of the children, who had been bored at school before her arrival. Their angelic voices reverberate across the wilderness, warmly basking the residents’ hearts. One day, Abe (Nakamura Toru), a policeman with a troubled soul, arrives on the island. Haru, who harbors her own secret pain, is increasingly moved by the long shadow cast over Abe’s heart. But one summer’s day, Haru’s husband dies in an accident on a picnic with her students. The terrible wound in Haru’s heart causes her to abandon her worried father (Satomi Kotaro) and flee the island. Although she has escaped the island, she remains concerned for her students.
  
  Twenty year later, Haru, who works as a librarian in Tokyo, hears about a murder committed by one of her former students.
  “Why that one…”
  Determined to learn the truth about the murder, and to reunite with her students, Haru heads north. As she talks with each of them she gradually brings to light the secret feelings they had each harbored about the accident 20 years ago.
  “It’s my fault your husband died.”
  “I bullied her but I really liked her.”
  Haru learns how their regrets, built up into wounds, are still lodged in her former students’ souls. In turn, Haru reveals to them feelings she could not 20 years ago.
  
  As the teacher reunites with her 6 students after 20 years and secrets about the accident and the murder are revealed, their wounded hearts slowly mend and the film comes to a searing conclusion.
- Beginning of shooting
- Oct 01, 2011