Black Box Diaries (2024)

October 24, 2024 (JP) • Documentary • 103m

Overview

Journalist Shiori Ito embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country's outdated judicial and societal systems.

Director

Shiori Ito

Writer

Shiori Ito

Top Billed

Shiori Ito

Keywords

japan sexual violence justice human rights female journalist woman director sexual assault fight for justice gender equality systemic corruption corrupt legal system accountability me too movement disgusted

Where to watch

Free / Included

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Top Billed Cast

Shiori Ito

Self

Shinzo Abe

Self (archive footage)

Crew

Shiori Ito

Director

Mitsunobu Kawamura

Executive Producer

Eric Nyari

Producer

Hanna Aqvilin

Producer

Ema Ryan Yamazaki

Editor

Shiori Ito

Producer

Takashi Shinomiya

Co-Producer

Andrew Tracy

Sound Mixer

Mark degli Antoni

Original Music Composer

Robina Riccitiello

Executive Producer

Josh Peters

Executive Producer

Maya Daisy Hawke

Consulting Editor

Yuta Okamura

Director of Photography

Ryo Yukizane

Co-Producer

Yuta Okamura

Co-Producer

Mariko Montpetit

Co-Editor

Ema Ryan Yamazaki

Co-Producer

Fumiro Sato

Colorist

Nina L. Diaz

Executive Producer

Liza Burnett Fefferman

Executive Producer

Shiori Ito

Book

Shiori Ito

Writer

Mitsunobu Kawamura

In Memory Of

Hanna Aqvilin

Director of Photography

Yuichiro Otsuka

Director of Photography

Shiori Ito

Director of Photography

Andrew Tracy

Sound Designer

Reviews

CinemaSerf

⭐ 7/10

January 29, 2025

This is quite an harrowing watch at times whilst we follow Japanese journalist Shiori Itô as she seeks justice for an alleged rape a few years earlier. To be fair, up front, this is not a balanced documentary but a potent video-diary style presentation crafted by the woman herself to not only document the course of her own battle, but also to illustrate just how out-dated the legal processes were in a nation that's legal system still treated women as a possession of a man in many ways. We identify the accused - from whom we do not hear directly or via his representatives, and from there on we focus on her attempts to see him face her accusations. The film now concentrates on the courageous efforts of a woman to see that process of justice done. The laws that inherently obstruct her need to be identified, addressed and replaced so as not to protect, or be seen to protect, any influential people from heinous crimes of any sort. It also goes on to demonstrate quite effectively just how difficult - if you are to adopt the "innocent til proven guilty" approach that underpins so much of the legal system - it is to adequately codify crimes of an intimate nature ensuring that they are to be objectively dealt with. Especially problematic as there are so often no witnesses and/or extensive time lapses between the incident and any attempt at redress. It's also quite potent at illuminating what I feel are the frequently absurd differentiations between the evidence required for a criminal or a civil case. The latter always feels to me that it's more about balance of probability, sometimes even money rather than seeing the rule of law robustly and impartially upheld in the first place. This doesn't provide answers to these complex issues, indeed I suspect there are no straightforward answers - but that anyone has to go through this kind of emotional maelstrom just to get a day in court is something that the public ought to feel disgusted by.

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Black Box Diaries (2024)

Where to watch

Top Billed Cast

Crew

Reviews

CinemaSerf

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