Bari-Zogon

The title means 'Abusive Language' - a recurrent element in Watanabe's guerilla approach to indie production, which is generally rooted in his real-life investigations of personal problems and miscarriages of justice and distinguished by his un-Japanese refusal to go along with group-think. Here he reopens a case classed as 'accidental death' - a 26-year-old guy who froze to death in a cesspit - and dramatises what he believes really happened: the boy was silenced for voicing fears about the safety of nuclear power plants and refusing to go along with a related cover-up in the local mayor's election campaign. Watanabe predictably fails to get straight answers from the people involved in the case, but he puts up a persuasive argument.