The earthquake, tsunami and reactor meltdowns of March 2011 may have faded from the world's consciousness, but for many Japanese filmmakers, both young and old, it has been a life- and career-defining event. Documentary makers, especially, have gone north by the dozens to film the aftermath and interview the survivors, to the point where seemingly every angle has been explored — or exploited.
But similar to the major events inspiring previous generations of filmmakers here, from atomic bombings to environmental poisonings, new stories keep coming to light.
Yoju Matsubayashi centered his 2011 documentary "Soma Kanka Daiichibu: Ubawareta Tochi no Kioku (Fukushima: Memories of the Lost Landscape)" on the people of Minamisoma, a coastal town devastated by the tsunami and lying partly within the 20 km exclusion zone set up around the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.