As usual, the list below reflects my tastes, interests and viewing habits during the year. Some works are from 2024, but only became available here in Japan, or to me, only in 2025. Synopses, in italics, are from Letterboxd. Films are listed in no particular order:
A Stone’s Throw على مرمى حجر (Razan AlSalah) Amine, a Palestinian elder, is exiled twice: from land and from labour. Displaced from Haifa to Beirut, then again to Zirku Island, an offshore oil platform and work camp in the Arab gulf. A Stone’s Throw is a story of memories and disappearances, of trespassing borders, archives and private property to reveal the more than human relations that survive colonial space-time.
This is the best film I’ve seen this year in Yamagata, where I also attended From the River to the Sea, and the Mountains: Filmmakers in Solidarity with Palestine, a special event at which AlSalah was one of the main speakers.
“Unleash imagination against the states with nuclear weapons”
What Should We Have Done? どうすればよかったか? (Fujino Tomoaki). In 1983, the director’s 24-year-old sister developed symptoms of schizophrenia. Her parents couldn’t accept it—refusing to seek treatment for their sick child, they confined her to their house, to the point of even fixing a padlock on the front door to lock her in. Her younger brother, suspicious of his parents’ actions, began filming the family in an effort to openly question them. A family conflict that lasted over twenty years.
The film has become one of the brightest success stories in the Japanese documentary landscape of 2025. First presented at Yamagata in 2023—made possible in part through the Yamagata Dōjō program—it opened nationwide in December 2024. Initially screened in only a handful of cinemas, it remained in theaters for more than half a year and, driven by popular demand, eventually expanded to nearly 100 venues. The film has surpassed the staggering mark of 200 million yen at the box office and is scheduled to return to theaters again in 2026.
A powerful work grounded in the tools of personal cinema—long-term filming and extreme proximity between the filmmaker and his subjects—it depicts a profoundly sorrowful and painful story, but by addressing mental illness, family dynamics, and the ethical implications of filming the intimate space of one’s own family, the documentary presents also, for the viewer, a rich source of discussion.
The Guardians of the Harvest 鹿の国 (Hiro Riko). The Suwa Basin is a huge depression created when the earth was torn apart long ago. A deer sacrifice festival has been held here since ancient times, a ritual handed down from Suwa Taisha, the main shrine of the 10,000 Suwa shrines across the country. What do deer mean to the people of this region?
I saw the film four times in theaters and once at home (Blu-ray), so it is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the year for me.
The documentary is not without its faults: an overuse of drone shots, moments that could be read as a form of ruralism, and the fact that it is about Suwa Taisha but also co-produced by Suwa Taisha. Yet, as is often the case with sprawling and eras- encompassing works, the film contains multitudes.
To summarise, the film explores the traces of ancient—and still living—beliefs in the region, approached from multiple perspectives: folklore, religious practice, mythology, and nature. One of its many centers evokes the pre-Jōmon shamanic practices of the Suwa basin, a gigantic keloid and a “primordial scar, which once divided Japan in two, known in geology as the Fossa Magna (…) Just as the Fossa Magna was formed by fluids leaking from the Earth’s interior through the fault line’s fissures, the Suwa Basin has long been a repository for various myths, cultures, and beliefs, layered like a mille-feuille.” (Ohkojima Maki, here)
Formally, the film is an intertwining of informal interviews with priests, hunters, and farmers; a long reconstruction and staging of an ancient fertility rite; lyric and almost experimental scenes depicting natural elements; various practices related to the sacred; fix shot of the Suwa basin; and images and sounds of deer, the heart of this spiraling constellation of practices and symbols.
I have an incredibly long and confused essay on the film saved among my drafts. Unfortunately, as happened a few years ago with Expedition Content—one of the greatest documentaries of this century for me—it will likely remain there for the time being. There are simply too many things I want to say about Guardians of the Harvest, and the sheer density of the film makes it intimidating to give those thoughts a clear order.
Autism Plays Itself (Janet Harbord) A film shot in 1957 at the Maudsley Hospital, London, captures children under observation for atypical behaviour. In the present day, three autistic respondents watch the footage, offering new and insightful interpretations of the children’s actions. Through speculation and identification, with wit and audacity, the responses forge a new soundtrack from an autistic point of view.
SPI 烤火房的一些夢 (Sayun Simung) A Tayal family faces emotional and spiritual challenges after the passing of their grandfather. Their unfamiliarity with Gaga, the ancestral ethical system, reveals deeper cultural dissonance and generational gaps shaped by decades of assimilation policies and influences. Set against a postcolonial backdrop, SPI traces how one family, caught between modernity and indigenous memory, strives to carry forward the Tayal spirit left behind by their elders.
I wrote about the film here.
With Hasan in Gaza مع حسن في غزّة (Kamal Aljafari) Three MiniDV tapes of life in Gaza from 2001 were recently rediscovered. What started as a search for a former prison mate from 1989 led to an unexpected road trip from the north to the south of Gaza with Hasan, a local guide whose fate remains unknown.
“There was no editing involved in the film — the footage was used exactly as it was shot, in chronological order. To remove blurred or poorly filmed segments would have been equivalent to erasing the people and their land — especially when seen from today’s (2025) perspective. That’s why I kept everything. The only ‘editing’ consisted of adding sound and text.”
Kamal Aljafari during a Q&A in Yamagata.
In Their Own Words: The Women of Kurokawa 黒川の女たち (Matsubara Fumie) A documentary exposing the sexual violence euphemistically termed “entertainment” inflicted on women of the Kurokawa settler group during Japan’s imperialist expansion in Manchuria. Under state-led colonization in the 1930s–40s, Japanese settlers occupied Chinese lands. In August 1945, facing the Soviet invasion, the group offered 15 women to enemy troops in a desperate act of survival. Decades later, the survivors confront the silenced legacy of imperial violence, discrimination, and trauma.
The film could have benefited from tighter editing, with certain sections trimmed—most notably the final part involving the young students. Yet it remains a deeply powerful work, especially when it turns its attention to the relationships among the surviving women. The scene in which Satō Harue lies on her last breath as Yasue Yoshie speaks to her and gently strokes her hair is not only profoundly moving; it also reveals how the women’s shared traumatic experiences ultimately exceed what words or images can convey.
Hair, Paper, Water…Tóc, giấy và nước… (Nicolas Graux, Trương Minh Quý) She was born in a cave, more than 60 years ago. Now she lives in a village, with many children and grandchildren to look after. Sometimes, she dreams of her dead mother calling her home – to the cave.
Probably the more immersive documentary I’ve seen this year, sounds and images are perfectly paired to evoke sensations.
Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya (Malena Szlam) Forming part of a film constellation that stretches from Chile across the Pacific, in which Malena Szlam trains her camera on far-flung volcanic landscapes — by turns barren and verdant — the dazzling in-camera multiple exposures of Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya evoke the layered histories of the titular Bunya Mountains in eastern Australia’s Beerwah region, further deepened by sonified atmospheres from artist Lawrence English.
The most overtly experimental work, together with A Stone’s Throw, included on my list this year: colours, field recordings, overlapping of images…
Pelikan Blue Kék Pelikan (László Csáki) Hungary, 1990s. Travel abroad is finally possible, but unaffordable. By forging international train tickets, three young people get to know the world.
I saw this documentary at this year Niigata International Animation Film Festival in March, and even if it is from 2023, I’ve included in my list.
The democratisation of Hungary in the 1990s brought with it a desire to travel abroad and see the world, something that was impossible before 1989. The film tells the story of a group of friends who forged train tickets to visit Europe during the 1990s. It’s a real story, told by the actual participants (only a few were caught but didn’t go to jail), and to protect their identities the director decided to do it in animation.
It’s an extremely funny and life-affirming film, fast paced and capturing the sense of liberation felt by the young generation at the time. Rock music from the era is used to recreate the atmosphere of those times, and fake 8mm archival footage was created and added, making the film even more quirky and original.
Honorable Mentions:
Spring, On the Shores of Aga 春、阿賀の岸辺にて (Komori Haruka)
Recording with Mother “Working Hands” 母との記録「働く手」 (Oda Kaori)
Island of the Winds 2025 大風之島 (Hsu Ya-ting)
The Diary of a Sky يوميات سماء (Lawrence Abu Hamdan)
Discoveries/first watches:
Fertile Memory الذاكرة الخصبة (Michel Khleifi, 1980)
Harlan County U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple, 1976)
Vertigo Sea (John Akomfrah, 2015)
Meet Marlon Brando (Albert Maysles, David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin, 1966)
The Village Submerged 水になった村 (Ōnishi Nobuo, 2007)
Lo specchio rovesciato. Un’esperienza di autogestione operaia (Gianni Amico, Marco Melani, 1981)
The North Calotte Die Nordkalotte (Peter Nestler, 1991)
We Want Roses Too Vogliamo anche le rose (Alina Marazzi, 2008)
Asian Docs 