A Balance

In A Balance, documentary filmmaker Yuko wants to uncover the truth behind a case that involves a double suicide and a social outcry that completely ruined the lives of both families. The TV channel producers prefer the case presented as a student-versus-faculty deal, while Yuko is set to present the whole picture, which involves interviewing the families of both deceased. The truth also turns out to be more complicated than Yuko had anticipated. She struggles to make things right, but only gets drawn in deeper into the consequences of media exposure and eager-to-judge Japanese society.

With his second feature film, director Yujiro Harumoto interrogates the notion of truth: how truth as experienced by one can differ from how truth is portrayed, and can facts be related without becoming intertwined with the narrator's own story? Filmed in realistic style, with a hand-held camera, A Balance also casts an uncompromising look at the culture of shame in Japan and the media's role in it.