Japanese

In this genuinely powerful and illuminating documentary, we step inside an outpatient mental health clinic run by a sympathetic elderly doctor to pull back “the invisible curtain” obscuring the world of Japan’s mentally ill.

Personal, cultural and imagined fears are brought to the scenic surface of Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s superb new film, about a young woman navigating the customs and language of a foreign country while on assignment there as the host of a TV show.

This essential follow-up to Soda Kazuhiro’s taboo-breaking documentary on mental illness in Japanese society revisits the pillar of that film, Dr Yamamoto Masatomo, as he prepares to bid his patients farewell and enter into retirement.