Shiori Itō's Black Box Diaries gives us a reporter who can be tired, uncertain and in need of company. We recommend the film for that candour, though some of its evidence needs fuller explanation.
Fi1m perspective
In the phone diaries of Black Box Diaries (2024), Shiori Itō turns on a camera and tries to put her distress into words. We found these passages deeply upsetting because the reporter gathering the material is also the person struggling with what it concerns. Speaking clearly does not mean she is feeling any better. As director, writer and producer, Itō gives herself time on screen to be tired or uncertain, even when neither helps move the investigation along.
Her move into features followed short documentaries and television reports, including Lonely Death (Undercover Asia) (2018), which she directed. Black Box Diaries is her feature directorial debut, drawing on personal recordings and footage gathered over years. Its investigative passages give the film direction, but they are not always its strongest material. Some evidence needs fuller explanation, and the intimacy cannot excuse that. The private recordings are more affecting because Itō lets us see the strain of continuing to report rather than merely telling us the work is difficult.
Ema Ryan Yamazaki's editing makes those two kinds of material work together. A development in the investigation matters more when the diaries have shown how much effort it takes to keep going. Itō shares the cinematography credit with Yuta Okamura, Hanna Aqvilin and Yuichiro Otsuka, but the directness of the phone recordings is what stays with us. The handwritten entries give the private record another form, and their inclusion means that speaking to a camera is not her only way of being heard.
Just as important are the scenes with friends, where Itō can have company without explaining herself. They give the film warmth and a welcome change of pace, allowing her to do something other than demonstrate determination. Mark De Gli Antoni supplies the music, though the voices in the diaries made the stronger impression on us. This is what we would most like her filmmaking to retain: the patience to let someone be uncertain without treating it as a problem to solve. Choose Black Box Diaries when there is time afterwards to talk.
Biography
Shiori Itō is a Japanese journalist and documentary filmmaker. She directed, wrote, produced and served as cinematographer on the 2024 feature documentary Black Box Diaries, in which she also appears as herself. The film draws on her own recordings and experiences following a 2015 sexual assault.
Itō published the memoir Black Box in 2017 and went public with her allegations that year, becoming a prominent figure in Japan's #MeToo movement. She won a civil lawsuit in 2019. Born on 17 May 1989 in Kanagawa, Japan, she has directed other documentaries and written further books, and co-founded the production company Hanashi Films.
