Memories of Tomorrow (Yukihiko Tsutsumi, 2006, Japan) begins in 2010 with Masayuki sat in his wheelchair expressionlessly. He is lit by the warm orange light of the sunset and blends into the dull orange wall behind him. His wife, Emiko, shows him a corkboard full of pictures of people from Masayuki's life but he neither acknowledges her nor the corkboard's presence. She drinks from her cup and puts it back on the table. The film cuts to a close-up shot of the ceramic cup, handle broken off and the word ‘Emiko’ etched onto it, before cutting to a two-shot of the couple sat on their chairs looking into the sunset. Slowly, the camera moves out of and above the house, providing the audience with a bird’s-eye view of the surrounding rural landscape, before dissolving into a shot of a mountain, which time-lapses and cycles through the four seasons. Gradually, the film dissolves to an aerial shot of a busy cityscape. As the camera moves through different portions of the city and then through a window where the film's narrative begins, the buildings in the city begin to deconstruct and disappear. At the beginning of Memories of Tomorrow, time is moving backwards as the audience is brought to the narrative's present tense of the spring of 2004, where a younger Masayuki is energetically leading an advertising campaign.

Something similar occurs at the beginning of Memoir of a Murderer (Won Shin-yeon, 2017, South Korea). The protagonist, Byeong-soo, walks out of a dark tunnel into a landscape of snowy nothingness. The film cuts to an extreme wide-angle shot from the inside of the dark tunnel as Byeong-soo is positioned within the frame by the arch of the tunnel's exit, as he is visually isolated and enveloped by darkness. His hair is short and grey, and he is wearing his white shoes the wrong way around. His left eye starts to twitch as he begins to look around at his surroundings. Whilst that happens, a menacing low-rumbling drone enters the film's score; concurrently, sounds of people screaming enter the film too. As the air of confusion builds up through the sound and music, the film cuts to the title page.