is a Japanese documentary filmmaker, TV director and author.

Career

Born in

Hiroshima Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Chūgoku region of Honshu. Hiroshima Prefecture has a population of 2,811,410 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of 8,479 km² (3,274 sq mi). Hiroshima Prefecture borders Okayama ...

, Mori graduated from

Rikkyo University , also known as Saint Paul's University, is a private university, in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, Japan. Rikkyo is known as one of the six leading universities in the field of sports in Tokyo (東京六大学 "Big Six" — Rikkyo University, University of ...

, where he appeared in the student films of

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a Japanese film director, screenwriter, film critic and a professor at Tokyo University of the Arts. Although he has worked in a variety of genres, Kurosawa is best known for his many contributions to the Japanese horror genre, his honorific ...

. After graduating, he tried acting and even appeared in Kurosawa's feature debut, the pink film ''

Kandagawa Pervert Wars is a 1983 Japanese pink film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who would later go on to a career directing mainstream horror films. Synopsis A young girl, Akiko, in a tenement block in Tokyo's Kandagawa area, uses a telescope to spy on her neighb ...

''. He worked at other odd jobs before finally finding employment at a TV production company in 1989, where he began working on documentaries. While working freelance or under contract, he made a number of television documentaries before making '' A'' (1998) and '' A2'' (2001), two documentary movies about the everyday life of Aum Shinrikyo followers.

Aum Shinrikyo , formerly , is a Japanese doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for the Matsumoto sarin attack the previous year. The group says ...

is a controversial Japanese religious group most known for its involvement in a series of incidents including the Tokyo subway gas attack. ''A'' showed at the

Berlin Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festi ...

, and ''A2'' won two prizes at the 2001

Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival The Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival is a documentary film festival held biennially in Yamagata, Japan ( ). It was first held in October 1989, which makes it one of the longest running documentary film festivals in the world and ...

. One particular scene from ''A'', in which a plainclothes policeman attacks an Aum follower who is then arrested for attacking the actual attacker (Mori was filming from a distance), sparked controversy among the audience watching the film. The footage was later introduced in court and the 'Aum attacker' was acquitted as a result. Filmmaker Mori was accused of staging the improbable incidents and using actors. Some even refused to believe the footage was shot inside the Aum facilities. When ''A2'', Mori's second controversial film about the cult was completed, the filmmaker declared his unwillingness to return to the Aum theme in the future. By his own admission, the efforts invested in production of the two documentaries did not bring him anything more than financial damage and troubles, due to limited scale of theatrical screening and refusal of TV broadcasting corporations to license the films (Mori refused to allow isolated scenes to be used in video sets to Aum-related news broadcasts). However, in 2010 he wrote a critically acclaimed book on the intervening decade of Aum entitled ''A3''. While his documentaries on Aum Shinrikyo were very controversial when they were being filmed and shown, Mori is today considered amongst Japan's most talented independent non-fiction filmmakers. His most recent work, ''

311 311 may refer to: * 311 (number), a natural number * AD 311, a year of the Julian calendar, in the fourth century AD * 311 BC, a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar * 311 (band), an American band ** ''311'' (album), band 311's self-titled album ...

'' (2011), is a collaborative work about the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake. He has also published many books on social issues and the media.

Selected filmography

* '' A'' (1998) * '' A2'' (2001) * ''311'' (2011) * ''Fake'' (2016) * ''i: Documentary of the Journalist'' (2019) * ''Fukuda-mura Jiken'' (2023)

References

External links

Japan Times: "You just need to ask"
- on films by Tatsuya Mori. Registration required (free).
Midnight Eye: A
A review. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mori, Tatsuya People from Hiroshima Prefecture 1956 births Living people Japanese documentary film directors Japanese anti–death penalty activists Rikkyo University alumni