In this irresistible blend of ethnography and poetry, artist Ulrike Ottinger meditates on the lives of those who live in Japan’s Echigo region where the snow often lies several feet deep well into May. If in the popular imagination the natural and the human are frequently thought of as binaries, here the locals have developed their own customs, deftly adjusting to their austere living conditions. With the seasons comes a slowing down of time; women spend their days weaving reems of chirimen – a plain-woven silk crêpe – which is laid out under the evening light to flatten. Through the escapades of two Kabuki performers following in the footsteps of Bokushi Suzuki, who in the mid-19th century wrote Snow Country Tales, the film marinates in the richness of a phantasmagoric, magical world.