19th Annual
Louisiana's Reel Festival
Festival starts in
Nipponia Nippon Fukushima Rhapsody / Japan / U.S. Premiere
FEATURE NARRATIVE
Eight years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami of 2011.
Naraho town is in Fukushima Prefecture. The town is on the front-line of the government-funded nuclear power plant decommissioning work.
A good, hard-working, city office manager, Kokuhei Kusunoki (Daisuke Ryu) is transferred from Aizu Wakamatsu City to Naraho Town. He takes over the Disaster PR Division. There he gets to meet his unique co-workers (Nana Yanagisawa, Haruo Sekiguchi, Mitsunori Isaki and Takao Iida) and his boss Murai (Minoru Terada). Murai takes Kokuhei around Fukushima including areas washed away by the tsunami. They examine the still incomplete railway lines, the unfinished decontamination area and villages in the danger zone, where deadly cesium continues to pile up.
Kokuhei witnesses the realities of Fukushima and the lives of the residents and construction workers living there. Strangely, Murai, who shows him around, is always smiling broadly.
Meanwhile, Haruka (Miri Decouto), his physician daughter-in-law, works at a Pediatric hospital in Aizu Wakamatsu City. She’s worried about one of her patients, a boy named Yu who has begun talking to an invisible companion.
One day Kokuhei is told to organize a party to celebrate the professor who has been appointed as deputy director of the Atomic Energy Research Institute.
On the day of the party, Kokuhei is stunned to see the people in attendance seemingly enjoying the boisterous function.
Director's Bio
Ryo Saitani runs a movie theater, Laputa ASAGAYA, and a publishing company “Fusion Product Inc.” His first commercial feature-length film “Cesium and A Girl” has been nominated for 25 awards and garnered 10 prizes at overseas international film festivals, including Cinema on the Bayou, which he attended.
Naraho town is in Fukushima Prefecture. The town is on the front-line of the government-funded nuclear power plant decommissioning work.
A good, hard-working, city office manager, Kokuhei Kusunoki (Daisuke Ryu) is transferred from Aizu Wakamatsu City to Naraho Town. He takes over the Disaster PR Division. There he gets to meet his unique co-workers (Nana Yanagisawa, Haruo Sekiguchi, Mitsunori Isaki and Takao Iida) and his boss Murai (Minoru Terada). Murai takes Kokuhei around Fukushima including areas washed away by the tsunami. They examine the still incomplete railway lines, the unfinished decontamination area and villages in the danger zone, where deadly cesium continues to pile up.
Kokuhei witnesses the realities of Fukushima and the lives of the residents and construction workers living there. Strangely, Murai, who shows him around, is always smiling broadly.
Meanwhile, Haruka (Miri Decouto), his physician daughter-in-law, works at a Pediatric hospital in Aizu Wakamatsu City. She’s worried about one of her patients, a boy named Yu who has begun talking to an invisible companion.
One day Kokuhei is told to organize a party to celebrate the professor who has been appointed as deputy director of the Atomic Energy Research Institute.
On the day of the party, Kokuhei is stunned to see the people in attendance seemingly enjoying the boisterous function.
Director's Bio
Ryo Saitani runs a movie theater, Laputa ASAGAYA, and a publishing company “Fusion Product Inc.” His first commercial feature-length film “Cesium and A Girl” has been nominated for 25 awards and garnered 10 prizes at overseas international film festivals, including Cinema on the Bayou, which he attended.
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