Dutch pianist and composer Joep Beving has composed the original score for the Japanese movie The Promised Land, directed by Takahisa Zeze.

Mr. Zeze carefully selected existing songs from Joep’s albums and asked him to write a title track for his film, ‘Aika’.

The Promised Land – Film Synopsis

Takeshi (Go Ayano) is the town’s loner who lives with his mom and refurbishes used items for a living. One day, an elementary school student is abducted at a Y intersection in the middle of rice paddies. Neither the girl nor her abductor is found. Tsumugi (Hana Sugisaki), the missing girl’s best friend, can’t forgive herself as she was with her friend minutes before the abduction. 12 years later, Tsumugi graduates from high school and starts working at a local home improvement warehouse. One day the locals gather at the town hall to prepare for a festival that will take place the following day. Tsumugi is helping out when she meets Takeshi and finds herself empathizing with this lonely man.

During the festival, a little girl vanishes from the same Y intersection 12 years ago. The townspeople begin to suspect Takeshi. He flees to the city and out of desperation does something atrocious… A year later, Tsumugi is living in Tokyo working at a vegetable market. She returns home to help prepare for the local festival again, and meets Zenjiro (Koichi Sato), a beekeeper who lives with his dog in an aging community on the other end of the Y intersection. He has a plan to revitalize the village but it fails and the villagers are resentful. As a result he is ostracized from the village and becomes delusional, leading to a horrifying crime.