JETAA sponsored the screening of Reunion at this year’s Toronto Japanese Film Festival.
Spoiler Alert
Reunion opens with scenes of everyday life in Japan: a group of seniors playing table-tennis at a community centre, a mother and daughter out shopping together, a dentist’s office going about business as usual on a Friday afternoon. Of course, as we all know too well, March 11th was anything but ordinary. In the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and tsunami, the film is set in a school-turned temporary morgue where volunteers work tirelessly to identify the dead and “reunite” them with their surviving relatives.
The title character, a retired funeral director adds a dimension of humanity to the the impersonal process of dealing with so many dead. For example, make-up, laying family members side-by-side, requesting a small coffin for a child; all acts which serve to restore dignity basically in a situation where the scale of tragedy robs them of this.
It depicts the different ways in which people responded and grieved, if they even had the time to. It didn’t particularily over-dramatize (though undoubtedly some artistic license was taken) nor under-play, but gave a documentary-like depiction. That said, the film is by no means light-hearted, the ending especially moving, and yet against my expectations, it wasn’t the case that I was sobbing into a tissue throughout.
Nonetheless, there were some volunteers at the film festival who wouldn’t see it – too close to home, even after two years.
There were some one hundred plus people in attendance , many of whom were Japanese. James Heron, the executive director of the JCCC introduced the film and I also added a few brief words on behalf of JETAA as co-presenter of the film.
We heard many great things about the films on offer at this year’s festival (of all different genres), JETAA looks forward to continuing to support this festival and definitely encourages readers to check out a screening or two next year!
Text by Julia Rozinowicz
Photos by Nicholas Jones, Bokeh Photography