19 Mar 2025
Director: Shiori Ito
Japan, UK, USA
2024
103 min
In 2017, journalist and writer Shiori Ito’s memoir Black Box launched a societal reckoning in Japan. In the book, Ito publicly accused a prominent TV journalist of raping her two years previously. She had reported her assault to the police at the time, only to be told it was a ‘black box’: it had happened behind closed doors and there were no grounds for prosecution. A raw, remarkable and tightly wound documentary lent substantial narrative rigour by Ito’s journalistic skills, Black Box Diaries sees this first-time director take her courageous investigation to the screen. Unfolding her story like a thriller whilst combining secret investigative recordings and emotional first-person video, Ito pieces together the crime she experienced, fighting on her own behalf in the face of the authorities’ refusal to do so in any meaningful way. A searing exposé of Japan’s desperately outdated judicial and societal systems as well as a vivid, highly personal evocation of the psychological impacts of surviving sexual assault, Black Box Diaries sees Ito’s quest for justice become a landmark case in Japan’s #MeTooMovement.
San Francisco International Film Festival 2024 – Winner – Special Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature