Tokyo's Belly

For two years I lived in Tokyo – together with 36 million people. In 2011, I returned to Germany – my bags filled with images and stories about people that fill „Tokyo’s belly“. The film footage allows a look into otherwise closed places like water and sewage treatment plants. It shows sanitation workers, fishmongers, and farmers at work and illustrates the Japanese values of ritual, discipline, and belonging to a group. Since the 11th of March 2011, the perspective has shifted. In July 2012, I went back to visit the same people in Tokyo and in northeast Japan, and I asked them how things had changed. The result is a film about how this city of superlatives is supplied, at the same time delivering insight into the disaster of Fukushima and its aftermath. A film about the loss of trust in the technical and political elite and about the „anger in the belly“ of many Japanese.