Radioactivity is invisible. And yet there is a fine black dust all around Fukushima that makes the Geiger counters go crazy. Men in white hazard suits comb the landscape to scratch it meticulously from the roadsides and fill it into small bags. Passers-by stop, worried. They had hoped to take up their former lives again. One by one not only the birds are returning to the town of Minamisōma, but the people, too. But the nuclear accident is a crack running through biographies and traditions, separating the old people who feared less for themselves than for their children from the next generations. All those who return must ask themselves daily what price they’re willing to pay for it. But while animals are perishing by the roadside, the new (old) ideology that home is more important than security is seeping into many people again.
“Furusato” takes an ancient cultural landscape as a framework to unfold the visually monumental panorama of a place where normality and shock are at war years after the accident. Its protagonists are, among others, an activist who wants to prevent a public children’s run, a proud young horse breeder who is determined to continue her family’s tradition, and a former Tepco security engineer. All of them have one thing in common: the human factor.
Lars Meyer
Golden Dove German Competition 2016;
Nominated for DEFA Sponsoring Prize, Goethe-Institute Documentary Film Prize 2016
