Greetings from Fukushima

Marie is a young German woman whose life has come apart in her hands. To put herself back together she goes to Japan and joins a group volunteering in the area evacuated after the disaster; her job is to entertain people. There she meets Satomi, the region's last geisha, who has decided to move back into her ruined house. The two of them settle there together. Doris Dörrie shot the film in black and white and filmed part of it inside the exclusion zone itself. She refuses to present the disaster as news footage; what she shows is emptied houses, the belongings left in them, and one woman who chose to return. It played in the Panorama section at the Berlinale. As the distance between the two women closes, the film looks at how grief is finally set down.