Holy Island

Documentary, Japan 2010, 105 min., Original with English subtitles

In her debut, the young director Aya Hanabusa documents the protest of a fishing community on a small island in the southwest of Japan against the construction of a nuclear power station in poetic images. The protest movement mostly consists of elderly women and men, since the young generation has already left the island. More than two decades of resistance has changed the relationship between community members into one of kinship. Local politicians and business people on the mainland push hard for the construction of the station for purely economic reasons, but the stamina of the fishing families in defending both their surrounding nature and their livelihoods proves stronger in the end.