My Dearest Sister

Directed by Kyoka Tsukamoto

As its title indicates, this first feature by Kyoka Tsukamoto is a love letter and a bid for reconciliation. It is the story of a woman who left Japan for Montreal, while her sister stayed behind. Geographical distance isn’t the main concern here, though: it is, instead, the unbridgeable chasm separating two visions of the women’s homeland. One of the women stayed rooted in a stifling patriarchal society; the other, the filmmaker, rejected it. She alternates brilliantly, and tragically, between her personal and family story and that of her country, questioning the foundations of a society that tolerates and even encourages psychological and physical abuse. A deeply intimate selfportrait, with many flights of poetry and lyricism that become sources of healing. (BD)