Evil Does Not Exist

Evil Does Not Exist

December 1st

Aku Wa Sonzai Shinai

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

Japan | 2023 | 106m | Japanese

Writer-director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s much anticipated follow-up to the Oscar-winning Drive My Car traces the sensitive dispute between residents of a serene rural village and the city-based talent agency whose proposed plans for a luxury camping site threaten their way of life. As with his previous film, Hamaguchi has once again crafted a modern fable with mythic implications springing from the mundane, as rote bureaucratic efforts towards understanding patiently crescendo to a cosmic meditation on our place in the universe. Evil Does Not Exist feels wholly singular in the way it depicts classical themes of nature versus industry and will give audiences much to ponder.