What would it be like if your child disappeared one day?
What would it be like to have everyone call your grief a lie?
What would it be like to pick up the shattered pieces, and begin to move on?
Throughout the 1970s and 80s, North Korean spies purportedly kidnapped Japanese citizens for reasons never made clear. And while this is now a thing of the past, something that happened generations ago, an important question about humanity still lingers: why is it that we treat these headlines as just words until they significantly affect us?
Stolen is about just such a headline. But it’s told from the perspective of the family that loses a boy to such a kidnapping. A modern re-imagining of these true accounts, director Taka Tsubota’s indie film explores how the incendiary nature of media exacerbates the lives of an already grieving family, and how they are reduced to tools or mere talking points among pundits, politicians, and laypeople. The sad truth of the matter is that we love thy neighbor only if it bodes well us.
Stolen, then, is about shedding a light on what is otherwise just a headline, on the family that may otherwise just be a talking point, on the humanity that lies beneath a trove of inhumanity or, at best, negligence. It is about each of the family members dealing with this loss in their own way, despite the political and diplomatic debate that their son’s disappearance sparks on the international level.
This is a film that will be released worldwide through Amazon Prime, and for those residing in Los Angeles, an L.A. premiere will be held at the Japanese American National Museum on February 7, 2020. Join the director and everyone who worked tirelessly on this indie Japanese film to engage in a story about a tragedy most may not have heard of. Something real, intimate, and human. Something that may otherwise just be a headline.
Stolen trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JU1w5oUdkc
Get your tickets here: https://stolen2020.eventbrite.com
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