THE INVISIBLE ISLAND  was chosen as Best Feature Documentary, ex aequo with Ayumi Nakagawa’s "Atomic Refugee Moms"  at Uranium Rio 2021 International Film Festival on this 10th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster ! Thanks to all for your support!

AU-DELA DU NUAGE /BEYOND THE CLOUD (2013) will be screened online at the 10TH INTERNATIONAL URANIUM FILM FESTIVAL RIO DE JANEIRO May 20-30. To activate the subtitles, clink on the icon on Youtube. 

Fukushima. In search of the spirit of the zone. A story of nature, men, women, resilience, and failing technology. Decontamination workers of the power plant open their daily lives to the camera. Waves crash eternally on the shore of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Next to a white facility for radioactive waste burning, children play on the ground, black bags of contaminated soil pile up, while grass grows wild over them. Keïko Courdy has been filming every year since 2011, developing a relationship of trust, revealing the hidden traumas, and the secret life of nuclear workers in this parallel world, an invisible island. 

見えない島 “The Invisible Island, Fukushima in search of the spirit of the zone” was supposed to be screened exceptionnally on the 10th anniversary of Fukushima/3.11 disaster in northern Japan. Because of the sanitary condition, the screening has been postponed to June or July depending on the situation with Covid 19. https://www.mcjp.fr/fr/agenda/lile-invisible

Thank you everyone for the past year and thank you for the coming year. We write our dreams together. This year THE INVISIBLE ISLAND will finally come out in festivals and special screenings. Let’s hope we can experience the film in a movie theater. There is nothing like an enclosed dark room to share together a movie for 1 ½ hour and discuss it afterwards, enjoying a drink. “Happy New Year 2021″ by Keïko Courdy, Music: “BLINK"Hiroshi Yoshimura, Pika Pika Films 2021

Thanks to all. The film is getting ready to be screened at international festivals.

“A SAFE PLACE” is a short film made for Sakamoto Ryuichi “ASYNC International Short  Film Competition” during the production of "The Invisible Island”, using some of the same material shot in the zone around Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant between 2013 and 2017.

MORE

So far, so close... Fukushima is our garden.

MERRY CHRISTMAS !!! Meanwhile, in Fukushima...

Fukushima is a parallel world. From the outside, everything seems normal. Away from the forbidden zone, life goes on exactly as before. The danger now is invisible. Some say that all is fine, all is under control. But today, nothing is resolved.    Overwhelmed by the events of 11 March 2011, French director Keiko Courdy left immediately for Japan. She spent more than a year and a half talking to people in Fukushima. In order to understand, she also interviewed many famous public figures active in Japanese society since the triple disaster: artists, architects, writers, investigative journalists, no nuke activists, Naoto Kan the erstwhile prime minister at the time of the accident… Their compelling testimonies highlight the contradictions and movements in a society that is recovering from massive trauma. We all have much to learn from what is happening. Many people dream of a « Yonaoshi », a « renewal », but is it possible? Can we change our behavior? Contrary to appearances and the impotence felt by many, the change is profound. Throughout Japan, individual people are taking a stance against the prevailing inertia.

it shows the portrait of WOMAN, in a film setting reduced to its bare minimum, the methodical description of a place (a room, a window, a bed, things), the sole presence of WOMAN, her gestures and actions directed by inertia, monotony (WOMEN washes, smokes, reads, waits...), and the absolute pain coming from the loss (humanity has vanished). WOMAN talks to herself, remembers the past, talks about the outside world, she talks about MAN who stays behind the bedroom door and dares not enter. The inner voice that follows her in her solitude mixes with the images, until it replaces them.

BEYOND THE CLOUD - The trailer