Greetings from Fukushima

Greetings from Fukushima
Director : Doris Dörrie, Germany, 2016, 104 mins

Awards:
2017 Bavarian Film Awards – Best Actress
2017 Berlin International Film Festival – C.I.C.A.E. Award, Heiner Carow Prize

Director Doris Dörrie shot the film right in the heart of Fukushima’s Exclusion Zone only months after the catastrophe, telling the story of a young German woman Marie, who escapes to Fukushima to change her life. Working with the organization Clowns4Help, Marie hopes to bring joy to 2011 nuclear disaster survivors, some still living in emergency shelters. She soon realizes she‘s absolutely unsuited to the task of making tragedy less wearisome. But instead of running away, she decides to stay with Satomi, the last geisha of Fukushima, who has decided to retreat back to her ruined house in the formerly radioactive Exclusion Zone. The young girl and the older woman could not be more different but they gradually get to know each other and both find themselves confronted by the ghosts of their respective pasts.