Black Box Diaries Opens Oct 25th in NYC (Plus Review & Post-Screening Q&A)

The documentary Black Box Diaries:

“… Japanese journalist Shiori Ito takes on the most compelling and traumatic assignment imaginable – investigating her own sexual assault.

The nonfiction feature from MTV Documentary Films – an expected Oscar contender that has won awards at festivals around the world — opens Friday, October 25 at New York’s Film Forum before expanding a week later to theaters in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. In January, it becomes available for streaming and on demand for Paramount+ subscribers with the Paramount+ with SHOWTIME plan, ahead of its on-air debut. We have your first look at the film in the trailer above.”

Japanese journalist Shiori Ito takes on the most compelling and traumatic assignment imaginable – investigating her own sexual assault.”

I had seen the film earlier this Spring 2024 but had to wait to publish about the film until its impending release.

I first heard of Black Box Diaries when a PR agency reached out about opportunities to interview the filmmaker Shiori Ito for the San Francisco Film Festival. to prepare, I read the following about the film:

“A 2015 dinner with Noriyuki Yamaguchi evolves into a years-long nightmare for Shiori Ito after the veteran journalist drugged and sexually assaulted the Reuters intern. In her quest for justice, Ito faces long odds: Yamaguchi, is not only a high-profile newsman but also Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s personal biographer. But she will not be deterred in this powerful, intensely personal documentary that depicts her campaign to hold her assailant accountable. The case makes Ito the face of Japan’s #MeToo movement while launching a national discussion about the country’s outdated sexual assault and consent laws. As she faces threats and the possibility of a coverup, she turns investigator, chasing leads, determined to expose the truth. Splashed across the media as both a hero and villain, Ito becomes a voice for the modern Japanese woman, speaking for those whose own experiences have been too often silenced.”

After reading the description, I immediately knew that I wanted to watch the film and I wanted my friend, Rowena Chiu, a Harvey Weinstein survivor and #MeToo activist, to interview Shiori Ito, which I will post in the near future.

Review

After I watched an online screener in preparation to interview filmmaker Shiori Ito, an elderly sounding woman’s comment made in the post-screening Q & A of Black Box Diaries mirrored my thoughts exactly after I watched the film: “You are the bravest woman I’ve ever met.” After the film concluded and the lights went up, there was a standing ovation.

Shiori Ito documenting her personal experience against the forces of Japanese patriarchal culture, political power, and and a media landscape incapable of self criticism of its society as Ito tries to find justice for her rape case is a very compelling documentary – one of the best documentaries I have ever seen in my life. Ito’s bravery is mind blowing given her circumstances in Japan. She is the very definition of holding truth to power.

Ito’s case really didn’t get as much local Japanese press as it should have until the #MeToo movement started in the United States along with the Harvey Weinstein revelations became public. The New York Times did a story on her case, ‘She Broke Japan’s Silence on Rape’:

“As the United States reckons with an outpouring of sexual misconduct cases that have shaken Capitol Hill, Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the news media, Ms. Ito’s story is a stark example of how sexual assault remains a subject to be avoided in Japan, where few women report rape to the police and when they do, their complaints rarely result in arrests or prosecution.

But scholars say Japanese women are far less likely to describe nonconsensual sex as rape than women in the West. Japan’s rape laws make no mention of consent, date rape is essentially a foreign concept and education about sexual violence is minimal.

Instead, rape is often depicted in manga comics and pornography as an extension of sexual gratification, in a culture in which such material is often an important channel of sex education.

The police and courts tend to define rape narrowly, generally pursuing cases only when there are signs of both physical force and self-defense and discouraging complaints when either the assailant or victim has been drinking.”

The international #MeToo movement helped push the issue of sexual assault to be recognized in Japan. Ito became the face of #MeToo in Japan. Ito is hoping that a successful U.S. / international release will make Black Box Diaries generate enough publicity and momentum so that it would be an injustice and a shame on Japan if it were not released in her home country.

The documentary premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival to universal acclaim and to date, is 100% fresh according to RottenTomatoes.com with 36 reviews (primarily from Sundance). If this documentary does not get nominated for an Oscar for “Best Documentary Feature” – it will be an injustice!

As I had stated above, the Q&A was enlightening and reinforced my own views that Shiori Ito is one of the bravest, if not the bravest, woman (or man for that matter) that I have ever met in person.

Black Box Diaries opens Oct 25 in New York City.  It opens in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago on November 1.