Inori

Pedro González-Rubio, who won the Tiger Award in 2010 with Alamar, was invited by Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase to take part in the project NARAtive at her Nara Film Festival. The only condition was that the film be set in the surroundings of her birthplace, Nara, the capital of Japan in the eighth century.
So the documentary Inori shows a life that has almost come to a halt in a mountain village beautifully situated in a valley between thickly forested hills with an abundance of water. You used to hear children playing everywhere, one inhabitant remembers, but now the school has closed. The lack of work has driven young people away. Only a few old people have remained behind, musing during their daily activities about the way things were. Soon the mountain will just be a mountain, someone remarks nostalgically. González-Rubio records it in calm images in which nature is ever present. A certain thematic link with Alamar is obvious.