Real life brothers Koki and Ohshirô Maeda star in this gentle, poignant film about the power of imagination and friendship, and the inevitability of growing up. Though a little slow in places, Hirokazu Koreeda’s film is an unusually powerful musing on the everyday joys and sadnesses of life, that delights in celebrating the small things. Drawing on the kids-on-a-quest theme at the heart of many child-centric films, Koreeda’s film is a far more subtle affair than your average Disney flick and, in the end, shows us that there are no easy solutions when it comes to the break down of a family.

At the invitation of the Swedenborg Society, Best For Film is publishing a special series of reviews to follow its ‘Images of the Afterlife in Cinema’ film season, which will be exploring life, death and everything in between. This week we’re looking at the Japanese classic; Afterlife.