Fuku Nashi

Fuku Nashi is a fascinating film, as much a documentary born from an urgent quest for identity as a fictional look at the uprooting of its director. Julie Sando, the Swiss-Japanese filmmaker and artist trained at the HEAD in Geneva, films with surprising maturity the difficult encounter between two lonely souls, who have remained distant for too long. The visual aspect of this difficult intimate dialogue also bears witness to a long process of immersion, indispensable to the documentary perspective. Indeed, reality and cinematic fiction incessantly merge, and do so from the first nocturnal shots of an introspective movement that precedes a mise en scène of daily life composed of shade and light. Through the delicate observation of everyday silences and gestures, the camera’s presence opens up this middle ground that is vital for reunions in fiction and the real liberation of sensitive and painful speech, built around identity and the need for acceptance. A personal work, Fuku Nashi is a delicate and moving account that makes a lasting impression.

Javier Martín