Shiori Itō’s Oscar-Nominated ‘Black Box Diaries’ Has Been Embraced Around The World. So Why Isn’t It Being Seen In Her Native Japan?

deadline.com:

Shiori Itō’s directorial debut, Black Box Diaries, has won acclaim around the world since its debut at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, recently earning an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature.

But there’s one place it hasn’t been seen: in the director’s native Japan. The film, distributed in 58 countries globally and by MTV Documentary Films in the U.S., tells a first-person story of Itō’s attempt to seek justice and accountability after she was sexually assaulted by a prominent Japanese journalist. “We’ve been struggling to bring the film to Japan, and we hoped the [Oscar] nomination can get us through,” Itō told us in Berlin before she headed to London for the BAFTAs over the weekend, where Black Box Diaries was nominated for Best Documentary. “But instead, the nomination created another backfire, pushback, and we still don’t have distribution or theaters to do it yet.” Alarmed about the lack of distribution in Japan, two organizations in France took up the cause, launching a Change.org petition.

Their online campaign notes, “Shiori Itō stood up against a system designed to suppress voices like hers. With extraordinary resilience, she has challenged deeply entrenched structures alone.

Now, she needs our help to take the final step: bringing her story home.” The petition was originally posted in French, then in Japanese, and was recently translated into English.