An elderly woman enters a Manhattan subway station only to find herself sitting on a bench beside an elderly man of roughly the same age. As they sit and wait for their train in silence, two complete strangers on a bench, what the audience soon learns that they themselves don't know, is that they once shared the happiest day of their lives, playing together as children. Yet it's now too far back for them to remember anymore, too far back for them to recognize each other anymore. The story then shifts back and forth between the breathtaking landscape of their unconscious', as Isabel Lucas and Oliver Ackland play more youthful representations of how they see themselves inside, and search for the memory they once shared.

Accompanied by an extraordinary improvisational score by Montreal-based musician Jason Sharp, Daïchi Saïto’s Engram of Returning is an epic 35mm CinemaScope metaphysical travelogue that reveals a supernal world which pulses and flickers with formal patterns and deep hues.