Japan Cuts Review: Setsuro Wakamtasu’s FUKUSHIMA 50 Casts A Teachable Moment About Human Ingenuity
It’s been more than nine years since the world bore witness to the devastation at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. For posterity, the story of the people who stayed on site became the subject of Ryusho Kadota’s own non-fiction own novel, “On the Brink: The Inside Story of Fukushima Daiichi”, published originally in 2012 prior to English translations made available thereafter. That book now takes on new life in Fukushima 50, the latest film from Aircraft Carrier Ibuki and Snow On The Blades helmer Setsuro Wakamatsu, and screenwriter Youichi Maekawa who makes the transition here from television for his first-ever feature screenplay. It is the first film made that directly depicts the events of March 11, 2011, and the hours that followed as a team of fifty people worked to maintain the cooling systems in all four reactor buildings, all while mitigating with bureaucratic red tape from the Tokyo […]
