“I had become good at saying goodbye to things, places and people. Until he disappeared. Suddenly saying goodbye felt like something entirely new.”

A young Belgian woman returns to Japan to gain insight and find peace in her relationship with her Japanese ex-lover. She tries to make sense of the world around her by searching for the transience of things.

She travels around the country, observing nature as the seasons change. She is guided by the richness of the Japanese vocabulary and discovers that the language has many words for natural phenomena and emotional moments that don’t exist in Dutch or English. She develops a different perspective on things through Japanese culture. If she succeeds, she will be able to understand what happened to their love.
“Do you hear the wind in the pine trees” explores those experiences that cannot easily be expressed in words, but that everyone feels and knows: those moments when we consciously appreciate life. They make us feel humble in the world, in a positive way, as a small part of a great whole.
The film won the Audience Award at The Documentary Film Festival La Rochelle. Read the full article here.

Written and directed by: Azelle Lenaerts
Production: Visualantics
Producers: Steven Dhoedt, Nakazawa Nao

Colour grading: Chiara Pontuali
Head of Studio: Wim De Rick
Supervisor Lab & DI: Arnout Deurinck