After causing quite a sensation on the film festival circuit last year—it picked up the Grand Jury Prize and the FIPRESCI Award at the 2023 Venice Film Festival and was awarded Best Film at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival—Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Evil Does Not Exist is finally coming to streaming, following a special livestream event tonight on the Criterion Channel.
Populated by a cast of non-professional actors, the Japanese drama centers on a widower named Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) who lives with his eight-year-old daughter Hana (Ryo Nishikawa) in the Japanese mountain village of Mizubiki. "Yet this peaceful existence is threatened when a pair of corporate reps (Ryuji Kosaka and Ayaka Shibutani) arrive to launch a glamping site, sparking resistance from community members who fear the project’s potentially pernicious impact on the environment," reads the film's Criterion Channel synopsis. "When Takumi—a respected local figure—is offered the conciliatory role of site caretaker, it becomes unclear where his loyalties lie."
