Yumiko, a troubled young woman, believes she is responsible for the death of her grandmother as well as the suicide of her first husband, Ikuo. Five years after Ikuo’s death, she is happily remarried but her guilt and sorrow are never far away. Returning to her home town, she is drawn to a clifftop by the tolling of funeral bells—and by the siren call of the maborosi, a beautiful light that lures people into the sea. “The film is a document of the ‘light and shadow’ which flicker inside a woman,” Kore-eda said of his stunning debut feature, which evokes the universal experience of mourning and regeneration with subtle precision.