Ten years in the making, Kazuo Hara’s three-and-a-half-hour-long epic Sennan Asbestos Disaster is a longitudinal study of asbestos victims demanding reparations from a heartless state.
Building on Hara’s methods of ‘action documentary’ filmmaking, the film follows a group of plaintiffs who collectively open a lawsuit against the Japanese government, which they claim knowingly exposed them to asbestos poisoning.
Challenging the ethical norms of nonfiction filmmaking at the time, Sennan Asbestos Disaster is a fearless depiction of the dogged pursuit of justice.
