BERLIN--Three Japanese documentaries depicting the changed reality for people impacted by the Great East Japan Earthquake and the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and their resilience have wowed critics at the Berlin International Film Festival.
BERLIN--Three Japanese documentaries depicting the changed reality for people impacted by the Great East Japan Earthquake and the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant and their resilience have wowed critics at the Berlin International Film Festival.
The three are “Nuclear Nation,” directed by Atsushi Funahashi; “friends after 3.11,” directed by Shunji Iwai; and “No Man’s Zone,” directed by Toshifumi Fujiwara.
They are all featured in the festival’s Forum section for “avant garde, experimental and unfamiliar cinematography.”
The films have been shown several times since the festival opened on Feb. 9, and theaters have been almost filled to capacity each time. The festival, known as Berlinale, runs through Feb. 19.
Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa), the German Press Agency, said the films have “given a human face to the catastrophe.” The Die Tageszeitung newspaper said the films have “shown the collapse of an illusion of ‘safe nuclear power.’ ”
The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, meanwhile, said it is extremely difficult to express events such as the Fukushima nuclear accident in a film format.
At a news conference before the festival’s opening, festival director Dieter Kosslick said: “Be it the Arab Spring or the catastrophe in Japan, film producers have made political events into movies far faster than in the past.”
In “Nuclear Nation,” Funahashi follows residents of Futaba, a town in Fukushima Prefecture, displaced by the accident at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
Iwai, who is from Sendai, features dialogue with experts--or “friends”--he met after the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake in his “friends after 3.11.”
Fujiwara shot “No Man’s Zone” in Fukushima Prefecture after the nuclear accident, portraying exchanges with residents of Iitate, a village in the prefecture, and changes in the landscape.
The films appear to have generated attention particularly in Germany, which decided to phase out nuclear power plants by 2022.
(This article was written by Ken Matsui and Nami Hamada.)