Fukushima, Mon Amour (Grüße aus Fukushima)

FOCUS: KINOWERKS Two strangers—one European, one Japanese—forge an unlikely bond in the shadow of a city’s brutal devastation. If this premise sounds familiar, it should. For in Doris Dörrie’s (Enlightenment Guaranteed, MVFF 2001) powerful new film, she intentionally evokes Alain Resnais’ masterpiece Hiroshima, Mon Amour, but layers on her own unique vision. In this case, the city is Fukushima, still suffering from the destruction of the 2011 tsunami and nuclear reactor disaster. The two women—one an aging geisha, the other an aimless German—try to build a life in “The Zone,” now a wasteland still beset by lingering radiation and abandoned buildings. Can they overcome their cultural and generational divides, as well as the ghosts of the past that still haunt each of them? Or will they succumb to their tragic memories? Shot in gorgeous black and white, the answers are always in vivid shades of gray.