Fukushima: Les voix silencieuses

I'm So Sorry

July 2025 •French

In a quiet forest, a sign warns of radiation hazard. “Is this the past or the future?” muses the masked figure who appears like a kind of ghost in nuclear disaster areas. At a time when nuclear power may be re-emerging as an alternative to fossil fuels, this calmly observed and compelling tour takes us to places that may serve as a warning.

Reflection

January 2014 •Japanese

Eerie images of landscapes after the Fukushima nuclear disaster shot on black and white 8mm.

The Horses of Fukushima

December 2013 •Japanese

Fukushima's Minami-soma has a ten-centuries-long tradition of holding the Soma Nomaoi ("chasing wild horses") festival to celebrate the horse's great contribution to human society. Following the meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in the wake of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, local people were forced to flee the area. Rancher Shinichiro Tanaka returned to find his horses dead or starving, and refused to obey the government's orders to kill them. While many racehorses are slaughtered for horsemeat, his horses had been subjected to radiation and were inedible. Yoju Matsubayashi, whose "Fukushima: Memories of the Lost Landscape" is one of the most impressive documentaries made immediately after the disaster, spent the summer of 2011 helping Tanaka take care of his horses. In documenting their rehabilitation, he has produced a profound meditation on these animals who live as testaments to the tragic bargain human society made with nuclear power.

Uncovering Fukushima

May 2022 •English

It follows a group of investigators as they return to the nuclear zone in Fukushima to uncover the secrets behind the wildlife that has claimed the toxic environment as its own.

Mothers of Fukushima: Eiko & Yoshiko

May 2016 •Japanese

Eiko Kanno is a 79 year old grandmother whose life has been completely changed by the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. Her life should have been with her grandchildren but because of the disaster which caused her entire village of Iitate to be evacuated. She now lives by herself in temporary housing. Yoshiko Kanno and her extended family are very important to her changed life. Yoshiko Kanno lost her parents in the evacuation and she found herself living next door to Eiko Kanno. They entertain themselves by telling jokes to each other like a comedic duo. They now live together.

Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda

November 2017 •Japanese

Oscar winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto weaves man-made and natural sounds together in his works. His anti-nuclear activism grew after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, and his career only paused after a 2014 cancer diagnosis.

Fukushima

Invalid date •English

The definitive account of Japan’s struggle as it faced a nuclear catastrophe while still reeling from the devastation of an earthquake and tsunami.

Decommissioning Fukushima: The Battle to Contain Radioactivity

January 2014 •English

TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant is the site of one of history's worst nuclear disasters: the meltdown of three nuclear reactors. The decommissioning program in Japan learns from the Three Mile Island decommissioning in the US after the nuclear plant accident in 1976 in Pennsylvania.

Living in Fukushima: Stories of Decontamination and Reconstruction

October 2013 •English

In the aftermath of the 3.11 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, the Japanese government began implementing a large-scale decontamination effort to clean up the radioactive materials. A mother, a farmer, a community leader, an evacuee - hear how the clean-up effort has been carried out around their lives and what their hopes are for the reconstruction of Fukushima.

Chernobyl, Fukushima: Living with the Legacy

April 2016 •French

30 years after the Chernobyl catastrophe and 5 years after Fukushima it is time to see what has been happening in the “exclusion zones” where the radioactivity rate is far above normal.

The Radiant

April 2012 •English

The Radiant explores the aftermath of March 11, 2011, when the Tohoku earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed many thousands and caused the partial meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on the east coast of Japan. Burdened by the difficult task of representing the invisible aftermath of nuclear fallout, The Radiant travels through time and space to invoke the historical promises of nuclear energy and the threats of radiation that converge in Japan in the months immediately following the disaster.

Savagely, silence

October 2017 •Japanese

December 21, 2015. The image of a fox was captured by a camera inside the unit 2 building at Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant... A film-essay about contemporary Japan in the aftermath of March 2011 earthquake.

Alone in Fukushima

April 2014 •Japanese

"Alone in Fukushima" is a feature film documentary about Naoto Matsumura who remained in the nuclear zone with animals in Fukushima.

Fukushima: A Nuclear Story

March 2015 •English

A powerful documentary that sheds some light on what really happened at the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the 2011 earthquake and the tsunami that immediately followed. A powerful documentary - shot from March 11th, 2011 through March 2015 - that sheds some light on what really happened at the Fukushima nuclear power plant after the 2011 earthquake and the tsunami that followed.

Fukushima, une population sacrifiée

November 2012 •French

Fukushima, chronique d'un désastre

March 2013 •French

100 Years of the Atom

December 2020 •French

The exciting story of the splitting of the atom, a scientific breakthrough of incalculable importance that ushered in the nuclear age, has a dark side: the many events in which people were exposed to radiation, both intentionally and by accident.

311

March 2012 •Japanese

Two weeks after the earthquake, writer and movie director Tatsuya Mori, journalist Takeharu Watai, movie director Yojyu Matsubayashi, and movie producer Takuji Yasuoka, headed for the disaster stricken area, not thinking this film would become a production. "Only to confirm the situation" was their common objective.

Containment

September 2015 •English

Every nuclear weapon made, every watt of electricity produced from a nuclear power plant leaves a trail of nuclear waste that will last for the next four hundred generations. We face the problem of how to warn the far distant future of the nuclear waste we have buried --but how to do it? How to imagine the far-distant threats to the sites, what kinds of monuments can be built, could stories or legends safeguard our descendants? Filmed at the only American nuclear burial ground, at a nuclear weapons complex and in Fukushima, the film grapples with the ways people are dealing with the present problem and imagining the future. Part observational essay, part graphic novel, this documentary explores the idea that over millennia, nothing stays put.

Souls of Zen: Ancestors and Agency in Contemporary Japanese Temple Buddhism

June 2012 •English

The Japanese population’s reaction to the catastrophe of March 2011 has been described as “stoic” by the Western media. The Japanese code of conduct is indeed deeply rooted in their Buddhist traditions, and young filmmakers Tim Graf and Jakob Montrasio observe in detail what this means for the people and their religion. At graveyards, in temples, at monasteries and with families, they question the impact this triple affliction has had on the lives and beliefs of the inhabitants. How deeply do their beliefs affect their grieving? What role do the monks play in assisting people with their grief? And, what effects has this enormous catastrophe had on their religious rituals? SOULS OF ZEN inserts the events of March 2011 into the context of traditional Zen Buddhism, examining Japan’s religiousness and the beliefs of those practising it at a crucial turning point.