The celebration of the thousand year fire is approaching. But 11-year-old Satoshi still refuses to speak. Since his mother has died, when he was 4 year old, he has grown up with his father, an unsuccessful painter, in a small apartment in the big city of Tokyo. But now his father has died, too and he has to move to the country to stay with his grandparents and his only connection to the outside is his cell phone, which he got from his father and never gives away.
He assumes that nobody understands him and his pain and withdraws more and more to his solitude and has to suffer visitations of his father. His distressed grandparents take him to the village doctor to take care for him. Also his adopted daughter, who is the same age as Satoshi, tries to integrate him into the village community the best she can and protects him from the other boys, who start getting really cheeky and even throw his cell phone into the sea.
With lots of love and passions she gains his trust and shows him the sceneries he knows from his father's paintings and how to cook rice. The celebration of the thousand year fire comes and everybody wonders if Satoshi will swim with the others or not. For there is a tradition that the older boys of the village swim the long way from an Island off shore back to the beach and are a man afterwards. When Satoshi has watched a video, showing his father swimming this distance, he decides to try it as well.
If he will make it and if he is going to speak ever again, you'll find out in the movie.
It was a very impressive movie, that another time shows traditions and rites of a country in a wunderful way. It is also nice that nobody will force Satoshi to speak and just lets things go. Unfortunately I didn't understand the change from the city to the countryside. This should have been explained more clearly.
But all in all it really was an unusual and remarkable movie, which in my opinion you should see.