Following the owner of one such business named Saita, Andreas Hartmann’s and Arata Mori’s poignant documentary surveys the circumstances that drive people to desperate measures.
Melancholy documentary follows the owner of a ‘night moving’ business in Japan, helping people abandon their own lives.
‘Johatsu” means evaporation in Japanese, and is used to refer to those people who choose to disappear, severing all ties with their past lives and their families.
Interestingly, since the subjects only agree to participate on the condition that the film will never be screened in Japan, their new homes and identities are carefully obscured.
While some plot their departures on their own, others call on the services of “night movers”: companies that help people vanish without trace.
