SYSNOPSIS

Vivian Baumann is exhausted. She’s on her way to becoming a district attorney and about to move in together with her boyfriend, but things just don’t seem to be progressing. She tries to retreat to her mother’s, but there is no room for her there anymore. Her father thinks she just needs to take a break with some rest and relaxation and sends her off to an island. He sends her off with some good advice for positive thinking and self-optimization. Vivi explores the island and makes friends with some of its strange inhabitants

PROGRAM NOTE

Marie, whose life is full of concerns, sleeps with one of
 her boyfriend\'s male friends before her marriage. After
 ruining the wedding, she tries to find the meaning of
 her life by consoling the refugees living in Fukusima,
 refugees damaged by an earthquake and a tsunami,
 by doing magic shows. She meets Satomi, a geisha
 who wants to come back home, a home contaminated
 by radioactive materials. Marie helps her return
 home, and they form a friendship bridging cultures, a
 generation gap, and different nationalities.
 The aesthetic of unusualness that Doris DÖRRIE
 manifests shines through the methods employed
 in building the emotions between the two women.
 Fukusima\'s exclusion zone is a restricted district
 where daily life has collapsed and where the struggle
 for survival has become everyday life, a reality beyond
 the reality the rest of us live in.
 Doris DÖRRIE tries turning this unreality to reality by
 suppressing the overpowering atmosphere existing in
 the exclusion zone by using black-and-white images.
 The memories of despairing experiences and the
 landscape in Fukusima are aligned and lead them to
 the conclusion that \"Nonetheless, we\'ve got to live\".
 Using the stale cliché of Japanese horror movies, the
 alien atmosphere of the geisha, and the curiosity that
 the westerner has for foreign cultures, the mentality of
 human beings and the authorial distinctiveness has
 been manifested on the screen once again. If it\'s not
 her, who would imagine such humor in Fukusima?
 [Sunah KIM]