Sham

A Japanese film based on a real case. A middle school teacher is accused. A man named Yabushita is charged with bullying a nine year old pupil and driving him to attempt suicide. The mother is the one carrying the accusation. Ritsuko says her son has post-traumatic stress because of it and goes to the school, to the authorities and to the press. The teacher is suspended. He is then taken to court. From there the film is an investigation. Parent meetings, school administration, medical reports, newspaper headlines and hearings. What the narrative is interested in is not the crime but the construction: the film shows step by step how an accusation grows, how institutions take a side immediately, and how the press gives a man a name. The mother is not drawn as a liar from the start. The narrative keeps both possibilities open for a long time and leaves the audience undecided; at the end it takes a side. The director has set his known style aside. Takashi Miike is a name associated with excess; here he has made a plain, straight, calm drama, and the film drew attention for that choice. The source is real. It is adapted from a book published in 2007 by the journalist Masumi Fukuda examining a teacher's case in Fukuoka. The film had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival on the ninth of June 2025 and opened in Japan on the twenty-seventh. Go Ayano, Ko Shibasaki and Kazuya Kamenashi are in the cast, with Kira Miura as the boy. Who it is for: anyone interested in courtroom drama and the machinery of collective accusation. Who it is not for: anyone expecting genre cinema from Miike; this film is calm, long and entirely built on talk.