EVIL DOES NOT EXIST

Takumi lives with his eight-year-old daughter Hana in Mizubiki, a village in the mountains not far from Tokyo. He chops wood, draws spring water for the local udon restaurant, gathers wild wasabi, and occasionally forgets to pick Hana up from school. In the distance, hunters’ shots echo. Then a company from Tokyo announces plans to build a glamping site in the forest. At the town meeting, the villagers ask about the septic tank and the groundwater; the two representatives sent by the company have no answers – and later return to try to win Takumi over to the project. “Evil Does Not Exist” by Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, a Japanese film from 2023, begins as a village chronicle and turns into something more unsettling.

The Japanese director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi originally conceived the project as a short film for a live concert by the composer Eiko Ishibashi and developed it from there into a feature; it was shot with natural light in the border regions of Yamanashi and Nagano. It premiered in competition in Venice in 2023, where it won the Grand Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Prize; it was later named best film at the BFI London Film Festival and at the Asian Film Awards. It was shown at Around the World in 14 Films in Berlin in 2023 in the Japanese Night section.

Shown at the 2023 edition of Around the World in 14 Films.

All films 2023 · Film Archive