Voices in the Wind

Nobuhiro Suwa's 2020 Japanese film follows Haru's journey eight years after losing her family in the 2011 tsunami. Living in Hiroshima with her aunt, the young woman sets out when the aunt falls ill and travels toward her home town of Otsuchi; the people she meets on the road carry losses of their own. The object at the centre of the film is real: on a hill in Otsuchi stands a telephone booth connected to nothing, where people go to speak with their dead. Known as the wind phone, it became one of the best-known forms of mourning in post-tsunami Japan. Suwa works through improvisation, and Serena Motola's performance is the product of that method. The story is slow and offers no resolution. Who it's for: viewers who like Japanese independent cinema, films about grief and road narratives. Who it's not for: anyone wanting fast narrative, or arriving unprepared for content about disaster and the loss of family.