Ryusuka Hamaguchi: Survive, they say

In 2011, the young filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi saw the televised images of the tsunami sweeping through villages. He saw the devastated houses, the debris, the desolation. Reacting to the disaster, he sets out with his friend Ko Sakai to meet with survivors and create a work of remembrance and answer the question: what happened? The Tohoku trilogy was initially meant to be a collection of personal accounts but turned out to be far more than that. The filmmaker creates a dispositif that is as much a space for listening as a space for speaking, which transforms each testimony into a performative narrative. By building a personal story with each survivor, he enables the words that flow from the wound to become the source of a new life cycle and help to rebuild the community.