This film is based on the real story of a girl who is back at home in Japan after having taken hostage in Iraq, where she was gone to do charity work. Rather than being seen as a victim, she is considered as an embarrassment for the whole Japanese society and subject to hostility and threats. She is fired from her work, leaves her boyfriend who has turned against her and is harassed by anonymous phone calls and emails. Hostility even reaches her father. She cannot even find comfort with her family because of incommunicable. The film is realised with great sobriety, and remarkably played by Fusako Urabe. It is a good picture of the weight of conformism and rigidity of a society which can destroy individuals. This film was shown in competition in Cannes 2005.
Review of Bashing
