A Japanese eco-drama about a lakeside community’s resistance to a corporate “glamping” development in their beautiful unspoilt village has won the top prize at the London film festival.
Evil Does Not Exist, directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, tells the story of a community fighting to preserve its principles and the integrity of the natural world. They are up against a Tokyo company that has bought up swathes of nearby land, intending to turn it into a destination for well-off city tourists.
The film, the follow-up to Hamaguchi’s Oscar-winning Drive My Car, and starring the acting newcomer Hitoshi Omika, is on first glance a simple tale of corporate capitalism despoiling the environment. But Hamaguchi is ambiguous in his presentation of local people and outsiders as heroes and villains, with even the corporate PRs who pretend to listen to villagers’ concerns showing vulnerability.
When the film originally premiered at the Venice film festival, a Guardian review called it “closer to a prose poem”.
On Sunday, the LFF’s official competition jury said: “Subtle, cinematic and underscored by fully realised performances, Hamaguchi’s assured drama supersedes the sum of its parts. It is both a lyrical portrait of family and community, and a nuanced consideration of the ethics of land development.”
Hamaguchi said he was “genuinely delighted and astonished” to receive the award, thanked the cast and crew and singled out the composer Eiko Ishibashi. “As well as working on the music for the film Drive My Car, she also provided the concept for this film. I believe her music played a significant role in bringing this movie to completion and helped it to receive such great reviews,” he said.
The Sutherland award for first feature film went to the Swedish director Mika Gustafson for Paradise Is Burning, which is about three sisters aged seven to 15 who live alone after their mother vanishes for long periods of time. When social services demand a family meeting, the eldest sister plans to find a stand-in for their mother.
The first feature jury said the work was a “remarkable” first feature: “Its compelling universe was so complete and effortlessly executed. Nothing has been left untended to in this film, we were THERE, not like a fly on the wall or an intruder; it held us in its arms and it didn’t let us go.”
Other winners this year included Lina Soualem, who received the Grierson award for best documentary for Bye Bye Tiberias, a deeply personal and joyful exploration of the director’s relationship with her mother (Succession’s Hiam Abbass).
According to the jury, Soualem created a “poetic and intimate film that transcends the borders of their family home, to interrogate grief, identity, and the energy that propels you to find yourself”.
Meanwhile, Simisolaoluwa Akande triumphed in the short film category for The Archive: Queer Nigerians, which documents the experience of queer Nigerians.
