48 years – Silent Dictator

“What the modern movie lacks is beauty,” said D.W. Griffith, “the beauty of the moving wind in the trees.”

Born in Hiroshima in 1972, Sunairi lives in NYC. In the last decade, Sunairi has been making film works, expanding and experimenting with contents and forms of documentary films. From personal issues to collective memory and the public sphere, Sunairi creates each film’s distinct approach and style; Making Mistakes, a soul-searching journey in Tibet, COSMIC MOVEMENTS, a traditional ethnography on a group of Mexican Americans and Chicanos – indigenous people with roots in Mexico practicing the tradition of Anahuac (Aztec), Where it flows out into the plains, a meditative and spritual travelogue in India, air, about the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, 48 years – 沈黙の独裁者 (48 years – Silent Dictator), an interview documentary with Iwao Hakamada, known as the world’s longest-held death row inmate.

Currently Sunairi is in post-production with 石川真生 – オキナワより愛を込めて / Mao Ishikawa – From Okinawa with Love, about a Okinawan photographer Mao Ishikawa’s photo book of okinawan women with American GI and the history of sexual crimes by the US military in Okinawa, as well as Qué Tan Lejos / How Far Am I, a meditation on the relationship between reality and creation/poetry, personal and universal values in the changing context of a city, Juarez that rose out of the drug war in Mexico. The script was co-written with the protagonist, José Luis Rico.

Sunairi is researching to shoot in 2020, Das, a hybrid experimental biography/fiction/documentary film of Jibanananda Das, a Bengali poet, writer, novelist and essayist, known as the “most alone of poets.” The film will be written in collaboration with Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury and Amish Josh.