When a supporter of the group of victims who were going to appear in court in Osaka approached director Kazuo Hara, proposing that he shoots a documentary on the Minamata disease, no one anticipated the scale of the project. What started as a low-budget movie became a three-part documentary shot over 15 years and edited over an additional 5, with a budget 10 times bigger than anticipated. Minamata is a neurological disease caused by heavy metal poisoning with mercury disposed by a chemical plant in the waters of the Minamata Bay. At first animals begin to behave in strange ways, then children develop walking and speaking difficulties, so much so that in the ‘50s there were already 600 cases. What followed was a struggle for the acknowledgment of the disease and the disability it produces, for the granting of compensations, as well for the punishment of the guilty parties, a struggle which has been going on for 60 years already. The victims are not alone, so the movie becomes the epic of the resistance of the survivors and their families, as well as of the lawyers and the researchers which demand justice, thus turning it into a universal story. It is a about the power of a group seeking justice and it can be about anyone of us. And the group’s determination and dedication to the cause could only be doubled by the director’s own dedication, for 15 years. (Sorana Stănescu)