Official Film of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 Side B

synopsis

The first part (Side A) of the official film to mark the 2020 Summer Olympics held in Tokyo with a one-year delay caused by the coronavirus pandemic focused on the personal lives of the competitors and offered a social critique of the sporting environment. The second part (Side B) reveals the political background of the Games and documents the public protests that accompanied this edition. Archival footage, organizers' meetings, as well as personal accounts of stadium workers illustrate the daunting task of organizing such a gigantic event despite the adverse global situation. Kawase thus shows the flip side of the Olympics, which is usually hidden from the public eye.

“How did they overcome the challenge of conducting the sports festival that was postponed by a year, without spectators? I wanted to convey to generations living 100 years from now how we overcame this rare challenge, and I wanted to do it through the gaze of a child.” — Naomi Kawase

Source: website of the International Olympic Committee

biography

Naomi Kawase (1969) is one of Japan's most acclaimed directors. She hails from the rural Nara Prefecture in the Kansai region, which greatly influenced her early autobiographical shorts. She originally studied television production at Osaka University, where she subsequently lectured for four years. Kawase became the youngest winner of the Caméra d'Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival for her 35mm film Moe no Suzaku. She adapted this and her later film Hotaru (Firefly, 2000) into fiction. In 2007, she won the main prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Mogari no mori (The Mourning Forest), a film dealing with themes of death and grief. She often works with non-actors and explores the boundaries between fiction and reality and the world of documentary and feature film.

more about film

director:	Naomi Kawase
producer:	Takebe Yumiko, Kobayashi Sumihiko