Black Box Diaries Film Review: Painfully Real

Black Box Diaries is a very moving and heartbreaking personal story that paints a much bigger picture. 

The latter is not often seen in this kind of movies – or in the news reporting on sexual assault cases, for that matter – that may tend to spectacularize this topic instead, which makes Black Box Diaries an especially fascinating documentary to watch. 

“Now let me tell you my story,” reads one of the intertitles at the start of Black Box Diaries. That is exactly what the film does by following Shiori Itō, a Japanese journalist, as she documents her sexual assault case against Noriyuki Yaaguchi, a powerful man in journalism in Japan who was friends with the then-prime minister Shinzo Abe. When she comes forward with her story, which then starts the police investigation, Shiori immediately attracts a lot of attention, which is quickly followed by hate by some and admiration and respect by others. The public court case also puts her life at risk because this is such a high profile case, so much so that Shiori even has to write her will and publicly say that she woud never commit suicide. 

It may seem like Black Black Box Diaries is only a personal story, but it soon becomes much more than that. The personal account of Shiori’s own sexual assault investigation and court case becomes the larger picture of a country that clearly has a problem in the way the justice system deals with rape cases. More broadly, this applies to modern culture and society where rape is still overly prevalent and not criminalised as much as it should be. With the reference to the #MeToo movement happening at the same time across the ocean, Shiori reminds us that hers is, unfortunately, not an isolated case.

Towards the end of the documentary, the protagonist speaks at a women in media event where she – and, therefore, the audience of the documentary as well – gets to hear the struggles and hardships that other women have gone through in this industry. Unsurprisingly, a lot of them resemble her own. While this could leave a bad taste in the viewer’s mouth, and it very much does on many evel – Black Box Diaries seems to find a hopeful outlook amongst the tragedy. After all, Shiori’s story has inspired other women in media to also speak out and her groundbreaking court case can give others the hope that justice can be obtained, if nothing else. 

Most importantly, this is her story and her way of telling it. By the time the credits roll at the end of Black Box Diaries, the single most important element of the entire documentary is already evident to us. This film is produced and directed by Shiori herself, the very protagonist of the film. This is a powerful way of reclaiming the narrative around her own sexual assault case, which many people have spoken about as we have seen in the documentary, and sharing the only point of view that ultimately matters: her own. In doing so, Shiori is finally in charge of her own story, despite the great personal cost. 

From a technical point of view, the way Black Box Diaries use the documentary form is utterly fascinating. When it comes to the court case itself, the film chooses to use both recordings of the hearing and meetings between Shiori and her lawyers. This approach, which mixes official footage with videos taken by Shiori herself, becomes the distinguishing feature of the documentary and its approach to telling the story. The latter is especially interesting as it is either filmed in a phone format – when Shiori is addressing the audience – or in a home video fashion with a shaky camera that often avoids filming the other characters involved to preserve their privacy and safety.

Overall, Black Box Diaries is a powerful and courageous documentary that stands out for its honesty in portraying a traumatic memory for the director and subject of the story. It is also a perfect example of how filmmaking can become an important tool to reclaim the story and agency that is too often taken away from the women involved in sexual assault investigations. The details of such case are often shared on every newscast, but the subjects are very rarely allowed to have a voice in the matter after speaking out the first time. In this sense, Shiori subverts such this traditional narrative with her brilliant documentary.

Black Box Diaries will be screened at the BFI London Film Festival on October 12-13, 2024. Read our list of 30 movies to watch at the 2024 BFI London Film Festival!