©SION PRODUCTION
Le sense de l’objet – Des bribes de mémoire
The Whispering Star
2016 / Japan / 100min / Black and White, Color / Blu-ray
Director / Writer / Producer: Sion Sono
Producers: Takeshi Suzuki, Izumi Sono
Production: Sion Production
Cinematography: Hideo Yamamoto
Art Director: Takeshi Shimizu
Editor: Junichi Ito
Costume: Kazuhiro Sawataishi
Cast: Megumi Kagurazaka, Kenji Endo, Yuto Ikeda, Kouko Mori, Namie-machi Futaba, Tomioka-machi Futaba, Souma city Fukushima
The first film from Sion Productions, established by provocative auteur Sion Sono, The Whispering Star was 25 years in conception. It is set in a world where the number of humans has drastically dwindled due to frequent disasters and colossal blunders. Machines control the universe, and human beings are an endangered species. Yoko Suzuki is a cyborg flying around the galaxy in a beat-up, retro spaceship full of 20th-century technologies, delivering packages to human beings on far-flung planets. One day she arrives to deliver a package to the “Whispering Star,” where people die if they make sounds of more than 30 decibels. This unique and poetic science-fiction parable, filmed in the post-apocalyptic landscape of Fukushima following the massive earthquake in March 2011, was named the best Asian film at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.