B.

Hoping to distract herself from heartbreak at home, young German woman Marie travels to Fukushima in the aftermath of the nuclear disaster and joins a charity circus group. Still immersed in her own problems and now panicked by the wreckage around her, she is not up to the job of distracting others from their grief. Just as she is on the point of leaving, she meets elderly geisha Satomi who is rebuilding her home in the radioactive zone. The two women form a tentative friendship as Marie is drawn out of her self absorption by the ghosts of Satomi’s past. Beautifully shot in black-and-white, Doris Dörrie’s acclaimed new film moves fluently between human drama and catastrophe, with superbly judged performances from the two leads.
104 mins.