The Moon (Tsuki, 2023) Blu-ray

A major, challenging film confronts questions society must face now. Published in 2017, Yo Henmi’s novel The Moon draws on an actual case in which people with disabilities were killed or injured. This was the novel that the late Star Sands producer Mitsunobu Kawamura, known for The Journalist and Intolerance, most wanted to bring to the screen.

Yuya Ishii adapts Henmi’s novel into a film that enters territory our society treats as taboo. Receiving the proposal, Ishii felt that this was a film that had to be made. With that conviction, he reworked the original novel and brought its overwhelming force and living intensity to the screen.

Rie Miyazawa, Joe Odagiri, Hayato Isomura and Fumi Nikaido joined the production with exceptional determination. The film brings together Japanese filmmakers and actors prepared to challenge the subject with uncompromising commitment. It reaches beyond labels such as social drama or human drama: at its heart is the reality of problems that society and individuals see, yet choose to overlook. Releasing this film into the world turns its challenge toward ourselves. Viewers, too, must be prepared to confront it.

The film received awards and strong acclaim at numerous film festivals and ceremonies. Hayato Isomura won the highest supporting-actor award at the 47th Japan Academy Film Prize. At the 48th Hochi Film Awards, The Moon received three awards: Best Japanese Film, Best Supporting Actor for Isomura, and Best Supporting Actress for Fumi Nikaido. It received four awards at the 36th Nikkan Sports Film Awards: Best Film, Best Director for Yuya Ishii, Best Supporting Actor for Isomura, and Best Supporting Actress for Nikaido.

Deep in a forest stands a residential facility for people with severe disabilities. Yoko Dojima, played by Rie Miyazawa, begins working there. Once a celebrated writer, she can no longer write. She lives modestly with her husband Shohei, played by Joe Odagiri, who calls her his “master.” Her colleagues include Yoko, played by Fumi Nikaido, who hopes to become a writer, and Sato-kun, played by Hayato Isomura, a young man who loves drawing.

Yoko also meets a resident called Ki-chan, who shares her exact date of birth. Lying motionless on a bed in a room where no light reaches, Ki-chan feels strangely familiar to Yoko, who grows close to her. But this workplace is far from a paradise. Yoko witnesses other staff members treating residents without compassion and subjecting them to violence. No one is more outraged by such injustice than Sato-kun. His growing sense of justice and mission gradually emerges in the form of anger. And then that day finally arrives.

Video extras include stage-greeting footage and a trailer.

The film was produced in Japan in 2023 and opened nationwide on October 13, 2023. Its Japanese theatrical classification is PG 12.