When it comes to ghosts, plenty of films are centered around personal, unresolved business in the living world, but rarely do films examine how the spirit world would be, unless it’s for fantastical fights or horrific terror. The Parades instead focuses on a world of lost, but ordinary, and thankfully kind, souls. And as the film builds its calm world, Minako (and the viewers) get to meet the people who would form her eventual found family, whose various lives uncover the intimate and personal hopes of ordinary people, shaped by the events of their respective times. While the film doesn’t fully resolve all their stories, The Parades celebrates life, in all forms, and the powerful ways storytelling and community helps us go through it.

Great structure. The Parades has an excellent balance between establishing characters and establishing the in-between world, and that’s thanks to the structure. Each scene values one or the other, and in alternating the priorities of each scene, neither the world or its characters feel boring, because the structure ensures that the film doesn’t stay too long in certain subplots.