Addie Morfoot Contributor MTV Documentary Films has acquired U.S. rights to Shiori Ito’s “Black Box Diaries.” The docu, about the investigation of the director’s own alleged sexual assault, debuted in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and has been an audience favorite at this year’s CPH:DOX, South by Southwest and Hot Docs film festivals.
MTV will theatrically release “Black Box Diaries” this fall, beginning in October at New York’s Film Forum. The film will be qualified for awards consideration before streaming on Paramount+ for subscribers with the Showtime plan later this year.
Last year, the division released two Oscar nominated docs — Maite Alberdi’s feature length “The Eternal Memory” and Sheila Nevin’s short titled “The ABCs of Book Banning.” Ito’s 103-minute film tracks her arduous, five-year struggle to bring to justice renowned TV reporter Noriyuki Yamaguchi for allegedly sexually assaulting her in 2015, when she was a 26-year-old intern at Thomson Reuters.
She went out for a drink with Yamaguchi, only to become intoxicated and end up in his hotel room. In 2017, Ito’s memoir about the alleged rape, titled “Black Box,” was published and went on to win the Free Press Assn.
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