Júko no tenbin

For Yuko, it’s all about the truth. A documentary filmmaker, she helps out as a teacher at her father’s private tuition school in her spare time. She’s determined not to let the TV station’s editorial staff censor her new project. Her film is going to tell the true story behind the public scandal of a relationship between a student and her teacher that ended in two suicides. But when Yuko learns that her father has also had an affair with a student, the filmmaker tries to do the right thing and has to rethink her own principles. Yujiro Harumoto finds moving and authentic images for his drama about the balancing act in documentary between cinematic and actual truths which homes in on the question of whether it is right to play one off against the other. Yuko No Tenbin also delivers an atmospheric portrait of a society in which shame and dishonour can have drastic social consequences. (Berlinale)