The Roots

I don’t know how to describe my sister. So instead of conveying with words, I decided to point a camera. The documentary 'Chizuru' was directed by Masakazu Akasaki of Rikkyo University's Department of Body Expression and Cinematic Arts in the School of Contemporary Psychology. This film, planned as his graduation project, is a fresh and gentle family story that continuously filmed Akasaki's sister, Chizuru, who has severe intellectual disabilities and autism, and their mother over the course of a year.

On the loess plateau lies Yan’an, the “holy land of the Chinese Revolution.” Hai Xia, abandoned at birth by her Red Guard parents sent from Beijing during the Cultural Revolution, seeks answers to her origins. Her quest stirs painful memories among former Red Guards. Huang Yuling, who also faced a similar past, joins her search. Sentenced for “counter-revolutionary crimes,” he lost a child under similar circumstances. After 30 years, Hai Xia and Huang Yuling set out to uncover the truth.

Waichi OKUMURA, a 80- year-old WWII veteran and other 2600 ordered to stay on in China and fight along with the Chinese nationalists in the post-1945 civil war. Racing against the time, he powerfully campaigns to expose the secret military orders that kept them in China years after Japan had surrendered. His journey starts from the hot spot of Asia, the Yasukuni shrine. His quest takes him to China, where he had once become the killing machine, and finds truths about the Japanese military as well as himself under the long spell by it. During his journey, he meets a Chinese old lady who was kidnapped, raped, and confined by the Japanese soldiers. From her, he hears a story of human evils - and even forgiveness.