In the Wake

A strange series of murders in Sendai: the victims are tied up and left to starve, and both of them had worked on welfare benefit claims after the disaster. Nine years earlier the city had been wrecked by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Tone, just released after serving a sentence for arson and assault, surfaces as the suspect, but detective Tomashiro cannot get to anything conclusive. Adapted by Takahisa Zeze from a novel, the film moves past the mystery to what the disaster exposed in the Japanese welfare system, and to collective responsibility, the limits of compassion and the stigma attached to needing help. Takeru Satoh plays Tone and Hiroshi Abe the detective.