There is a scene in Shiori Itōit’s burning documentary Black box logsin which the director, who is also the subject of the film, tells a swarm of journalists about her attempt to press charges against her rapist. Like many survivors of sexual violence forced into this ritual of public recovery, she is a model of what society expects of courageous women. Her face betrays no emotion and she is dressed in the chaste uniform of the wronged: delicate earrings (Ito opts for pearls), a classically cut blouse (a black button-up here) and little or no makeup ( slight signs of blushing and redness). a single stroke of eyeliner).

Ito’s voice remains calm as she recounts the police’s initial refusal to accept her victim’s report and their arsenal of excuses: Sex crimes were difficult to investigate, they said; her rapist, Noriyuki Yamaguchi, former Washington bureau chief of the Tokyo Broadcasting System and friend of the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was a figure too powerful to scrutinize.

After a few months, the authorities dropped Ito’s case and the young woman, herself a journalist, decided to make it public. She held the aforementioned press conference in May 2017 and released a memoir five months later.

Ito’s actions – a rare move in Japan, where fewer than 10 percent of rape victims report their cases – sparked a #Me too moment in the country, forcing the nation to reckon with its attitudes towards sexual violence, its perpetrators and its survivors.

Black box notebooks, which debuted on October 25 in the United States, chronicles Ito’s attempts to obtain legal redress. With its combination of iPhone videos, news reports, hotel security footage from the night of Ito’s rape, and various audio recordings, the film is a visceral testimony to survival and recourse.

In its devastation and familiarity, Ito’s debut feature finds company among works that realize the power of survivor testimony.

An obvious fact that comes to mind is She saidthe conventional dramatization of Maria Schrader New York Times the investigation by journalists Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor into Harvey Weinstein. Schrader deployed the testimony in a striking way, using the actual recording of Ambra Battilana Gutierrez’s meeting with Weinstein to shift the film’s perspective and jolt viewers out of the comforting lull of fictionalized accounts.

Another is Chanel Miller’s 2019 memoir. Know my name, in which Miller, who was assaulted by Stanford University athlete Brock Turner in 2015, reclaims her identity under the anonymizing moniker Emily Doe. Like Ito, Miller’s narrative finds a galvanizing energy in self-revelation.

A more recent work is the sobering piece from director Lee Sunday Evans and actress Elizabeth Marvel. The Ford/Hill project at the Public Theater in New York. This recently ended production interpolates the hearings of Anita Hill, who appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 to testify against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, who had harassed her sexually, and Christine Blasey Ford, who appeared before the same committee in 2018 after accusing then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school.

The material power of the accused—granted by a society more likely to side with attackers than with survivors of assault—connects these works, which span different countries and years. Together, these women’s stories form a towering chorus of damning revelations, illustrating the difficulties survivors face when trying to tell the truth.

Most people in Ito’s life begged her not to make it public. Conversations with his family and one of the investigators of the failed criminal case, some of which are included in Black box logsreveal the depths of fear that fuel a culture of silence in Japan. These people fear losing their jobs, tarnishing their reputations, and fear the threat of violence that could come from Ito submitting to a merciless public.

However, the journalist, driven by the values ​​that attracted her to her profession, is obliged to try. Ito approaches her case with the same rigor as she would a report. This method makes the document easy to follow for those unfamiliar with contemporary Japanese society while still giving Black box logs the propulsive rhythm, ironically, of a procedure.

Many scenes show Ito recording phone calls, taking copious notes, and sitting in rooms surrounded by transcripts and highlighted evidence files. As a filmmaker, she uses her conversations with her editors, lawyers, and friends to explain why a criminal case was dropped, a civil suit was filed, and the politics within Japanese society that complicated every step of her journey.

Anecdotes gleaned from clandestine meetings with an anonymous investigator underscore Yamaguchi’s power. In a particularly implicit story, the investigator tells Ito that despite a warrant for the prominent journalist’s arrest, police chief Itaru Nakamura, who counts Yamaguchi as a friend, decided not to do so.

The details of Ito’s case, especially for audiences familiar with survivors’ stories, echo stories that have become more common since the height of the #MeToo movement. The insensitivity of investigators, the cowardly interrogation methods of police that seek to ignore the memories of survivors by insisting that the truth depends on minute details, and the vitriol of a misogynistic public are all on display in Black box logs.

Where Ito’s film distinguishes itself is in the diatritical iPhone videos, which serve as a mode of confrontation for the director as subject. In these lucid and visceral confessions, Ito the journalist dissolves and Ito the person appears better.

They reveal the chronic isolation of survivors and give space to the intimate demons that arise when they are not forced to mask their pain through calibrated outfits and regular intonations. They reappropriate the idea of ​​testimony, transforming it from a public act to an urgent and curative private act.