If Blessed

Poet Okachimachi Kaito makes his directing debut. Featuring lead actress Ono Machiko, who starred in The Mourning Forest (Mogari no Mori) and is also a regular in director Kawase Naomi’s other works, this film portrays the pure love between a prisoner sentenced to death and the fiance of the man he killed, and was nominated to be in the section “Japanese Eyes” in the Tokyo International Film Festival. Jun (Kubota Masashi) receives the death penalty for a botched robbery that turned into murder and while in prison, he is visited by Kaoru (Ono), a Christian and the fiance of the man he killed. However, when her fiance was killed, he was secretly with another woman. Jun and Kaoru soon become attracted to one another and, using a bible, they start to communicate in secret.