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Tatsuya Mori, Japan's documentary filmmaker, Berlin Documentary Film Festival award winner.

Author of A, 1998 and A2, 2001, two documentary movies about everyday life of Aum Shinrikyo followers. Aum Shinrikyo is a controversial Japanese Buddhist religious group most known for involvement in a serience of incidents including the Tokyo subway gas attack. One of the films received a Berlin Documentary Film Festival grand prix award, but movies did not screen in Japan theatrically, were not broadcast on television and not accessible for rent although available for purchase.

A particular scene from A, where a plainclothed policement attacks an Aum following and who is immediately arrested for attacking the actual attacker (Mori was filming from a distance) caused specifically controversial reactions among the audience watching the film. The footage was later introduced in court and the 'Aum attacker' was acquitted as a result. Filmmaker Mori was accused in staging the improbable incidents and using actors nevertheless. Some even refused to believe the footage was shot inside the Aum facilities.1

When A2, Mori's second controversial movie was completed, the filmmaker declared his unwillingness to return to Aum theme in the future. By his own admission, the efforts invested in production of the two documentaries did not bring him anything more than financial damages and troubles, due to limited scale of theatrical screening and refusal of TV broadcasting corporations to licence the films (Mori refused to allow isolated scenes to be used in video sets to Aum-related news broacasts). The films are available for purchase and as illegal downloads at major peer-to-peer networks such as eDonkey.

Mori is considered amongst the Japan's most talented independent non-fiction filmmakers.

External links

• Japan Times: "You just need to ask" - on films by Tatsuya Mori. Registration requited (free).
• A
• A2
• Midnight Eye: A. A review.

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