Dear Tomorrow

38 million people live in and around Tokyo, yet many of them are so lonely that in some cases it is life-threatening. Loneliness is so prevalent that Japan has appointed a minister for loneliness and experts speak of an (a)social pandemic across the modern world. In Dear Tomorrow we meet two of them. Unbeknownst to them, they are actually already connected to each other through the chat line ‘A Place for You’: a lifeline where young volunteers try to help people in crisis. But every day thousands of people are writing, and helping everyone is difficult. This is a film you feel deep in your heart – not least when the light finally breaks through and they gently make the human contact they have been missing. With its sensitive and luminous images, Dear Tomorrow is quiet and attentive, and therefore all the more a poignant film about the universal need for contact and presence.