0.5 mm

Momoko Ando's 2014 Japanese film runs past three hours and tells the story of a carer. Sawa, working as a helper for the elderly, loses her job because she could not refuse a family's request that she sleep with an old man, and is left with nowhere to go. She then finds elderly men on the street, enters their lives, moves into their homes and establishes a kind of enforced relationship of care. The moral ground is deliberately unclear: Sawa both exploits and genuinely attends to them, and the viewer does not know how to regard her. Sakura Ando's performance carries that uncertainty; the director is her sister. Japan's ageing crisis and its loneliness are the story's concrete ground. The length is demanding, and deliberately so, in order to make the duration of care labour felt. Who it's for: viewers interested in Japanese independent cinema and stories about ageing and care. Who it's not for: anyone unable to take three hours, or avoiding content about sexual abuse and the abuse of older people.