According to the research of Heaven’s Section 324, your behavior during the last 24 hours before death reflects your entire-life, and determines your afterlife. If you behaved well, you will go to heaven. If you behaved badly, you will go to hell. Two middle-aged angels, Steve and Guy, have been working in Heaven for two million years since the arrival of human beings.

This time, their target is a young man, John, who died of drug overdose, which the angels hate to deal with.

• Running time: 24min 40sec, & 26min (Director's cut)
• Genre: comedy
• Self-Rated-R for drug-use and violent language.
• Pre-production begins in Dec, 2001. The movie has completed on Aug 2003

After three years of study in the US away from Japan, I heard news of my maternal grandfather’s death. I couldn’t see him before he died, or attend his funeral.

A week after of his death, I had a weird dream. I was taking a subway, and tried to run away from a scary monster. Suddenly, the subway stopped. Then I heard the familiar voice calling my name. When I looked at the platform, I saw my grandfather looking at me. I knew somehow he was on the way to go to the hospital. He said to me,“good luck.” The subway started moving. He was walking up the stairs. I tried to say something to him before he disappeared but the subway was already in the tunnel.

I woke up and left my apartment for the college. Suddenly the tears started streaming down from my eyes. I couldn’t see him and I couldn’t say “thank you” to my grandfather. His soul came across the Pacific Ocean to see me. Yet I couldn’t even say “thank you” to my grandfather.

After a year incident of the dream, I’ve been thinking of my first English movie. I wanted to make a movie about my grandfather. However I did not want to make a requiem movie.

Then, I came up with this movie, “Life After,” after mixing various ideas. The entire production process was a series of coincidence, especially the actors and crews.

This movie was the most effective production I’ve ever encountered. After working with a couple of independent digital films in the Santa Monica College Film Club, I learned some filmmaking style. Most of all, I’ve met very talented student filmmakers. Glen Diller (Director of Photography and Producer) and I’ve worked for a couple other films with him. Steve Bigler (Angel Steve and Producer) helped in my poor English screenplay by going through over 10 meetings. Bita Shafipour helped the entire production from casting to production. Sylvia Farazmand’s production design was more than I’ve expected. Charlie Slemaker brought excellent sound recording equipment that the student filmmakers would never able to obtain. And Peter Valentine and Lissette Salazar Napoleoni composed very fascinating music and song. I am very proud of actors and crews, and feel fortunate that I could make a film in Los Angeles.

I truly believe that the filmmaking is combination of various artists, now. I couldn’t make “Life After” without the help of my actors and crews. Because I met my filmmaking friends, Giacun Caduff, Junya Sakino, Marcus Nobreus, Mieko Koyama, and Ruben Pulido, and worked for their movies, I was able to bring Life After onto the screen.

My personal story became ours (crews' and actors'). Now our movie becomes yours (audiences'). I hope you can enjoy the world of afterlife.

P.S. Also thanks to my parents and Nicolle for your support.

Katz