Unfolding in a series of mythic vignettes, this late work by Akira Kurosawa brings eight of the beloved director's own nighttime visions, informed by tales from Japanese folklore, to cinematic life.

This film, like many from director Werner Herzog, is a poem of oddness and beauty. Investigating the lives of the "professional dreamers" who conduct research at the bottom of the world in Antarctica, he finds a happily cynical lot, who regard climate change and the potential extinction of Homo sapiens in rather a different light than most people. They study penguins, seals, volcanoes, miniscule underwater creatures, and the shifting ice patterns....