Writer and director Daniel Kreizberg’s debut feature is an animated dreamlike odyssey centering two brothers, inspired by his real life relationship with his late brother. Channeling the deep emotions of family events into an oblique, metaphorical and evocative narrative, this nonlinear past-present-future-living-bardo-afterlife story is at once deeply personal yet archetypal and expansive.

Emerging from the darkness of an eternal void, an older brother undertakes an astral voyage home to the realm of the living. Reuniting with his younger brother he implores him for help reaching the sacred waters of a distant land, where he believes he can rewrite the story of his death. Embarking together on this quest the brothers set sail, each not knowing the secrets the other harbors; their obstacles and tasks interweave earlier childhood experiences, the older brother’s experience of death and the bardo, psychological allegories evoking depression and substance abuse, social and ecological themes, and more. Traversing an epic natural landscape the siblings confront a society whose myriad fractures threaten their mission; meanwhile, encounters with complex mother and father figures bring home the emotional challenges of the family unit. In final scenes near their journey’s end, the brothers must grapple with their diverging fates, their lives transforming in unexpected ways through dangerous passages of grief and love that lead them both, in different ways, toward the possibility of renewal.

This Studio Ghibli-style fable with a Shinto-inspired feeling for animism and nature builds upon the exquisite 2D handcrafted painterly style of Kreizberg’s previous award-winning animated shorts, with expressive kinetic colors framed by negative space immersing audiences in currents of emotion and fragmented remembrance. Intended for an international audience aged 12+, the film will be positioned as a work of prestige cinema at film festivals and awards competitions, with potential to reach a wide audience through theatrical and streaming distribution.