Documentary
In 2017, journalist and writer Shiori Ito’s memoir Black Box launched a societal reckoning in Japan. In it, Ito publicly accused a prominent TV journalist of raping her two years previously. She had reported her assault to the police at the time, only to be told it was a ‘black box’: it had happened behind closed doors, and was therefore considered unprosecutable.
A raw, remarkable and tightly wound documentary lent substantial narrative rigour by Ito’s journalistic skills, Black Box Diaries sees this first-time director take her courageous investigation to the screen. Unfolding like a thriller and combining secret investigative recordings, vérité shooting and emotional first-person video, Ito pieces together the crime she experienced, fighting on her own behalf in the face of the authorities’ refusal to do so in any meaningful way. A searing exposé of Japan’s desperately outdated judicial and societal systems, as well as a vivid, highly personal evocation of the psychological impacts of surviving sexual assault, Black Box Diaries sees Ito’s quest for justice become a landmark case in Japan’s #MeToo movement.