Documented Screening Program: Black Box Diaries

Black Box Diaries is a daring work of first-person journalism, as director and journalist Shiori Ito embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, launching the #MeToo movement and exposing the country’s outdated judicial and societal systems.

In 2015, Japanese journalist Shiori Ito was assaulted by prominent media executive Noriyuki Yamaguchi – a close associate of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. But in a country where the legal age of consent is 13 and sex-crime legislation dated back to the Meiji era, prosecuting – let alone winning – such a case was almost unthinkable. Undeterred, Ito went public in 2017, detailing her experiences in her memoir ‘Black Box’, and now follows up with her bravura and Oscar®-nominated debut feature Black Box Diaries.

Unfolding like a thriller and combining secret investigative recordings, vérité filming and emotional first-person video, Black Box Diaries is her real-time investigation of her own sexual assault – and includes raw video diaries (shot on Ito’s iPhone), surreptitious audio recordings of police negligence, and vérité courtroom footage.

The inaugural winner of the CPH:DOX Human:Rights Award, as victim-survivor and as director, Ito gives powerful voice to her own life – and law-changing story – and hope to women everywhere.

Ticketing information: Tickets are $14 for AIDC delegates and are available to purchase via the ACMI website or in-person at the ACMI ticket desk.

 

Image credit: Image by Tsutomu Harigaya for Black Box Diaries (Dogwoof, 2024)

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