The Zen Diary

Writer Tsutomu lives alone in a mountain cabin in Nagano. He collects fruits and mushrooms from the mountain and raises vegetables in a field. Every day, he cooks his meals with these natural ingredients. Sometimes his editor, perhaps his girlfriend, joins him. We follow Tsutomu for 12 months as he feels the flow of the seasons. Gradually moving closer to his one obstacle: though it has been 13 years, he is still unable to bury his wife's ashes. The Zen Diary is an incomparable work that begins as a culinary feature but transforms, with a measured pace and the stunning vistas, to a film that plays on the heartstring. This astute and heartfelt feature brings us closer to ourselves and to basic questions of life and death.