Oriental Elegy presents Sokurov’s meditative journey to a small Japanese island village, where landscape, houses, objects, and people appear blurred through the mist as in a dream. His sensitive and careful encounters with lonely old people envisioning the end of their lives are complemented by the director’s own interior journey, in which aural affinities revive memories of his own country, Russia.

Using the documentary format to portray the lives of three people, Dolce explores the contours of memory and nuances of the psyche. Miho Shimao, widow of the celebrated Japanese writer Toshio Shimao (who died in 1986), lives with her handicapped daughter on a solitary island in the middle of the ocean, avoiding strangers. She discovers herself through introspection, self-analysis, and spiritual revelation as her husband’s life and work are evoked.