今村昌平
The film tells the story of a poor farm-worker who, according to local tradition, must take his 70-year-old mother into the mountains to die. Deciding to break the custom, he instead returns home with his mother. The film has the similar subject as the Japanese films, "The Ballad of Narayama" (1958) (Keisuke Kinoshita) and "The Ballad of Narayama" (1983) (Shohei Imamura).