There is a scene inside Shiori Itoit’s on documentary Black box journalsin which the director, who is also the subject of the film, tells a swarm of reporters about trying to press criminal charges against her rapist. Like many survivors of sexual violence forced to participate in this ritual of public appeal, she is a model of what society has come to expect of brave women. Her face betrays no emotion, and she’s dressed in the chaste uniform of the injured: dainty earrings (Ito opts for pearls), a conservatively tailored blouse (a black button down here), and she wears little to no makeup (slight signs of blush and a single stroke of eyeliner).

Ito’s voice remains calm as she recounts the police’s initial refusal to accept her victim’s report and their arsenal of excuses: Sex crimes were difficult to investigate, they said; Her rapist, Noriyuki Yamaguchi, the former head of the Washington Bureau of the Tokyo Broadcasting System and a friend of the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was too powerful a figure to be examined.

After a few months, the authorities dropped Ito’s case, and the young woman, a freelance journalist, decided to go public. She held the aforementioned press conference in May 2017 and published a memo five months later.

Ito’s actions — a rare move in Japan, where fewer than 10 percent of rape victims report their case — sparked a # Me too moment in the country, forcing the nation to consider its attitudes toward sexual violence, its perpetrators, and its survivors.

black box journals, which opened on October 25 in the US, chronicles Ito’s attempts to obtain legal redress. With its combination of diaristic iPhone videos, news reports, hotel security footage from the night of Ito’s rape, and various audio recordings, the film is a visceral testament to survival and recourse.

In its devastation and familiarity, Ito’s debut film finds companionship among works that realize the power of survivor testimony.

An obvious one that comes to mind is She saidMaria Schrader’s conventional dramatization of New York Times reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor’s investigation into Harvey Weinstein. Schrader unfolded the testimony in a striking way, using the actual footage of Ambra Battilana Gutierrez’s encounter with Weinstein to shift the film’s perspective and jolt viewers out of the comforting lull of fictional narratives.

Another is Chanel Miller’s 2019 memoir know my name in which Miller, who was assaulted by Stanford University athlete Brock Turner in 2015, claims her identity from the anonymous pseudonym Emily Doe. Like Ito, Miller’s narrative finds a galvanizing energy in self-revelation.

A more recent work is the play by director Lee Sunday Evans and actress Elizabeth Marvel The Ford/Hill project at the Public Theater in New York. That production, which recently ended its run, interpolates the hearings of both Anita Hill, who went before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 to testify against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, who sexually harassed her , and Christine Blasey Ford, who went to trial. the same committee in 2018 after she accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school.

The material power of the accused—conferred by a society more likely to side with the perpetrators than the survivors of the attack—links these works, which span different countries and years. Together, these women’s stories form a commanding chorus of damning revelations, speaking to the difficulty survivors face when trying to tell the truth.

Most of the people in Ito’s life begged her not to go public. Conversations with her family and one of the investigators in the aborted criminal case, some of which are included in Black box journalsreveals the depths of fear that feed a culture of silence in Japan. These people are worried about losing their jobs, tarnishing their reputations, and threatening the violence that could come from Ito’s submission to an unrelenting public.

However, the journalist, propelled by the values ​​that attracted her to the profession, is obliged to try. Ito approaches her case with the same rigor as a news story. This method makes the document easy to follow for those unfamiliar with contemporary Japanese society while giving Black box journals the propulsive rhythm of, ironically, a procedural.

Many scenes show Ito recording phone calls, taking copious notes, and sitting in rooms surrounded by highlighted transcripts and evidence files. As a filmmaker, she uses conversations with her editors, lawyers, and friends to give context to why a criminal case was dropped, a civil suit followed, and the politics within Japanese society that complicated every step of her journey.

Anecdotes gleaned from clandestine meetings with an anonymous investigator underscore Yamaguchi’s power. In a particularly compelling story, the investigator tells Ito that despite an arrest warrant for the high-profile journalist, police chief Itaru Nakamura, who considers Yamaguchi a friend, has decided against it.

The details of Ito’s case, especially for audiences familiar with survivor narratives, echo stories that have become more common since the height of the #MeToo movement. The insensitivity of investigators, the interrogation methods of police who seek to ignore the memory of survivors by insisting that the truth depends on minute details, and the vitriol of a misogynistic public are all exposed in Black box journals.

Where Ito’s film distinguishes itself is in the diaristic iPhone videos, which serve as a mode of confrontation for the director as subject. In these clear and visceral confessions, Ito the journalist dissolves and Ito the person is better seen.

They reveal the chronic isolation of survivors and give space to the private demons that come to the fore when they are not required to mask their pain with calibrated outfits and constant intonations. They reclaim the idea of ​​testimony, changing it from a public act to an urgent and healing private one.