Black Box Diaries

Official Selection, 2024 Sundance Film Festival
Special Jury Award for Documentary Feature, 2024 San Francisco International Film Festival

If this were fiction, it would be a gripping tale. An ambitious young journalist wrapped up in a legal battle is plagued by constant surveillance, threats, a cacophony of public backlash, and an opponent with such proximity to power that he can make problems disappear.

But BLACK BOX DIARIES is a documentation of real life. And Shiori Itō is not a suave detective but a junior journalist forced by corruption into a high stakes investigation of her own assault. As if we’re on a Zoom call with Itō herself, BLACK BOX DIARIES takes us into an exceptionally intimate space as she boldly takes legal action against a veteran journalist. When she releases an unprecedented memoir, Itō unwittingly positions herself as the face of Japan’s #MeToo movement, even before it has truly arrived in the country. Deftly documenting the entangled threads of the personal and the political, BLACK BOX DIARIES blends vlog-style confessions with undercover footage — raw glimpses of her life punctuated by tense iPhone call recordings and courtroom scenes.

Throughout the film, Itō remains steadfast in her commitment to truth-telling, despite the personal cost. Her identity as a journalist becomes both armor and conduit, and her identity as documentarian gives BLACK BOX DIARIES unparalleled electricity and intimacy.

– Neha Pearce