For Hollywood star Johnny Depp, the story of an act of industrial pollution that devastated the southwestern Japanese coastal community of Minamata over half a century ago is one that had to be told, not only for its victims but for current and future generations.
The film "Minamata," which he both produced and stars in, arrives this month to do just that in Japan, where despite perceptions that the incident belongs to history, litigation is still ongoing by those who feel they were overlooked for support.
Depp plays Eugene Smith, a renowned American photojournalist whose 1971 photo of a teenage girl sickened by the mercury poisoning that struck the city in the 1950s and 1960s awakened the world to the tragedy and became emblematic of the dangers of industry running amok when economic growth is prized above all else.