My Season (2005)

My Season 2005 / わたしの季節 2005 / Watashi No Kisetsu

Kobayashi Shigeru, the Director of Photography of the documentary film Aga ni Ikiru (Living with the River Aga) spent three years making this documentary in a home for severely mentally and physically handicapped children in the town of Yasu in Shiga Prefecture. The Number 2 Lake Biwa School has cared for severely physically handicapped children for over 40 years. The renovation of the old and crumbling facilities provided the inspiration for making this film, which mixes 16mm synch sound sequences of the lives of the people in the home and their families with 8mm footage from the time when the school was founded and the earlier years of some of the inhabitants. Each of the residents has a different story to tell. One of the long-term residents decides to leave the facility and move to a more independent halfway house set up by the residents, causing his parents to worry. Another resident is wholly dependent on an artificial respirator and can only communicate by moving his eyes. As the seasons change, so do the small dramas in the school unfold. (Source: JFDB, The Japanese Film Database)