Do Unto Others

When an elderly man and the manager of a home visit nursing centre are found dead, a great shock runs through the neighbourhood. As the investigation goes on, the deaths of forty two elderly patients are tied to Shiba, a caregiver whose warmth and devotion to his work everyone knew. The question the film asks is not who did it but how this could go on for so long without being noticed. The account also looks at families carrying the burden of care alone and at an arrangement that does not see that burden. The subject is heavy, yet the film neither makes a spectacle of the killings nor turns the defence of the man responsible into its own voice. Kenichi Matsuyama and Masami Nagasawa appear in Tetsu Maeda’s Japanese film, completed in 2023.