Un an après le tsunami qui a ravagé le nord-est du Japon, la réalisatrice japonaise Momoko Seto se rend à Ishinomaki, près de Tokyo. Elle y recueille les témoignages de cinq personnes sinistrées. Déjà présente à Paris Cinéma en 2011 avec Planet Z, la réalisatrice livre les terrifiantes et touchantes histoires de ceux qui ont survécu à l’événement sans jamais tomber dans le misérabilisme. Au récit de leurs expériences se mêlent adroitement des plans de bâtiments éventrés, traces palpables alors encore visibles.

In February 2012, I went to Ishinomaki, a town North of Tokyo that was half destroyed by the tsunami of March 11th, 2011, to meet the disaster victims who now live in temporary housing. I spent several days in the North, under the snow, listening to these people talk candidly about what they had lived through, telling their own stories without the media as an intermediary. Their testimonies were terrifying, harsh and sad, but at the same time touching, sincere and human. From the pictures and interviews that I collected, I decided to make a film, not to reflect how awful the events were, but to communicate the singular and even surreal nature of each person’s experience. My intention wasn’t so much to focus on this particular event in Japan, but rather to make these stories more universal as a way of paying tribute to all the victims of natural disasters throughout the world.