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WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 15, 2012

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SearchFukushima in spotlight at Berlin film festival
ENTERTAINMENT FEB. 15, 2012 - 05:30PM JST (5)Recommend

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BERLIN — The Fukushima nuclear disaster has comeunder the spotlight at Berlin’s film festival with threefilms exploring its impact on Japanese society lessthan a year on.

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Screen shot from thedocumentary film Nuclear Nationon the Fukushima disaster
AFP

The 11-day festival, which prides itself on its
generally edgier and more politically-overt line-up
over other film showcases, was perhaps a fitting
backdrop for the documentaries.

“I’m more than happy to be here because the Berlinale has got a long history of showing
all those political, socially conscious films,” Atsushi Funahashi, director of “NuclearNation,” told AFP.
He said that although he was sensitized to the nuclear question because his family had
been affected by the 1945 allied atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he was unsure at first
how to tackle Fukushima.

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at March 4 event for fans“First of all, I didn’t know what to do as a filmmaker, but I knew I had to do something,”
he said, adding one of his motives had been the difference in data from international andJapanese officials.
He focuses on the exile of residents of Futaba, where the crippled Fukushima Daiichi
nuclear plant was based, to an abandoned high school 250 kilometers away.

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The story homes in on a mayor whose town no longer exists as he tries to keep thecommunity together.

FEB. 13, 2012 - 01:45PM JST (“No Man’s Zone,” by Toshi Fujiwara, journeys inside a 20-kilometer area which wasevacuated after the disaster, as well as surrounding areas, to talk to “normal” people
about how their lives were affected.
With slow panoramic sweeps of battered buildings by the sea, thick piles of rubble, boats
lying on their side and crumpled cars, the film opens saying that images of destruction
are “always difficult to digest.”
It intersperses lingering shots of cherry blossom trees in the spring, cattle and green
landscapes with frank conversations with farmers and fishermen who have lost theirlivelihood.

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An older couple talk openly and animatedly about how they want to keep their damaged
home despite the cost of repairing it and their experiences of having to stay in a refuge.

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“I had a very strange feeling that the people who were directly concerned were somehow
very neglected,” Fujiwara said.

faces increased quake risk,
2 Fukushimascientists say

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Meanwhile, in “Friends After 3.11,” director Iwai Shunji discusses the political, socialand economic state of the country with new “friends” that include a nuclear plantengineer, banker and journalists.

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5 Remembering

34“I want to portray Japan’s present and future as told by these ‘friends,’” he said.
The disaster, triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, contaminated theenvironment and forced tens of thousands of residents around the Fukushima nuclear site
in northeast Japan to evacuate their homes.

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Many still do not know if or when they will be able to return.
© 2012 AFP

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2/15/12 3:17 PM