There are around 1,500 Kurdish people living in the greater Tokyo area, many of them forcibly displaced. Despite repeated applications, not one of them has been granted refugee status.
This is the bleak backdrop for Fumiari Hyuga’s “Tokyo Kurds,” which holds the surprising distinction of being only the second-most harrowing documentary about Japan’s treatment of asylum seekers to be released this year.
Thomas Ash’s “Ushiku” — which had its online premiere in May as part of the Nippon Connection film festival in Germany — used hidden cameras to capture interviews inside an immigration detention center in Ibaraki Prefecture, and the film’s austere, lo-fi aesthetic was a perfect match for its unblinking moral gaze.