Evil Does Not Exist

Aku wa Sonzai Shinai

RYUSUKE HAMAGUCHI
Japan, 2023
106 minutes, Color

The director of the Oscar®-winning Drive My Car, in a very different mood, looks at contemporary life in a village setting, where modernity and rusticity coexist peacefully, then precariously. At the center is Takumi (Hitoshi Omika), a thoughtful if distracted single father and odd-job man. When a Tokyo talent agency announces plans for a nearby "glamping" site, two talentless scouts pitching the project can't convince the canny locals, who know it's not just water that flows downhill. The two scouts earnestly turn to Takumi, for them, a font of rural wisdom. But their presence has disturbed an equilibrium. Evil may not exist, per the mysterious title, but nature does, and human nature must adapt.—Judy Bloch

In Japanese with English subtitles