The minimalistically staged Strangers When We Meet displays similarities with Kobayashi's The Rebirth (2007) and provides a sensitive observation of a couple who, tormented by loss, blame and guilt, adhere rigidly to their daily routine. Will they ever find each other again?

A sixteen year old boy, Ryo, experiences the painful ordeal of his mother being hospitalized and then dying. The boy turns to crime, but doesn't find success. He then seeks out his remarried father, but the pain still exists.

Mixing interviews, rare archival footage and film extracts, the film shows how Melville's works were impacted by what he experienced in his youth during WWII, and how it structured his whole approach to cinema, not only in its thematic but also in its aesthetics.

Coincidence and the aftermath of violence. A man's middle-school daughter has been murdered. His wife is already deceased. He tells a counselor he wants to live in anonymity, working with his hands. He moves away and gets a job in a factory. The woman who is the mother of the killer wants to apologize to the father, although she knows it would change nothing. He refuses to meet. She moves back to her hometown. She works in the kitchen at an inn where the man now lives. No one speaks. He eats alone. He reads in his apartment. She walks to her home and has a sandwich. She keeps her eyes lowered. He drives to work. Does either want to connect? What bond can they establish?