Johatsu 16 DLV

In Japan, around 80,000 people disappear every year. Most of them are eventually found or return home, but thousands of others simply vanish. They are known as jōhatsu, which means ‘the evaporated’. Japanese data protection laws are particularly difficult, which helps to facilitate the process of voluntary disappearance, making it difficult to track missing persons, even for family members. This beautifully photographed film explores the phenomenon, talking to people who have chosen to disappear and those looking for them, as well as the ‘night movers’ who help people reset their lives in places where no one knows them. The tensions involved in disappearing or looking for someone who has disappeared permeate the film and its protagonists, giving Johatsu the feeling of a suspense thriller – even as it provides an intimately candid window into the lives of those who have decided, for one desperate reason or another, that they need to start anew.