EXCLUSIVE: Black Box Diaries, the award-winning documentary that just made the Oscar shortlist, will debut on Paramount+ with Showtime in the U.S. next month.
Shiori Itō’s film, winner of the Human Rights Award at CPH:DOX and three awards at the Zurich Film Festival among many other honors, will bow on the streaming platform January 7. Oscar nomination voting begins the next day – Wednesday, Jan. 8.
“Black Box Diaries follows director Ito’s courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender,” notes a release. “Unfolding like a thriller and combining secret investigative recordings, vérité shooting and emotional first-person video, her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s desperately outdated judicial and societal systems.”
Shiori Itō (wearing scarf) surrounded by Japanese media after a press conference
MTV Documentary Films
The documentary marks Itō’s feature film directorial debut. “A journalist, writer and filmmaker with a focus on gender-based human rights issues, Shiori Ito wrote the bestselling book Black Box based on her experience. The book went on to win the Free Press Association of Japan Award for Best Journalism in 2018 and is now available in 11 languages, including English. In 2020 Ito was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine.”
At the IDA Awards in Los Angeles December 5, Itō earned the Emerging Filmmaker Award, recognizing the impact of her film. After winning the award, Itō spoke with Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast, describing what it has been like to bring Black Box Diaries to an audience around the world – excepting her native Japan. “It’s been very healing to me because it’s a very personal story to me,” she said. “And I’m always hoping that one day I’ll bring back this film to Japan, which hasn’t happened yet… So, I’m very excited.”
As the documentary shows, Japanese police and prosecutors were reluctant to investigate Itō’s allegations, in part because the law required evidence of a violent attack to pursue charges against an alleged assailant. After Itō came forward publicly, pressure mounted on legislators to amend the penal code and last year they did just that – redefining rape as “nonconsensual sexual intercourse.”
Director Shiori Itō
Mat Hayward/Getty Images
“As a journalist and as a woman who grew up and lived in Japan so long, it was just a hard realization of how backwards our legal system is and how also at a personal level, how difficult [it was] even to report the case to police,” Itō said in an earlier appearance on the Doc Talk podcast. “Making a cultural shift takes a lot of time and it’s difficult, but I believe in storytelling and I think it is one of the ways to do it.”
Black Box Diaries is a Hanashi Films, Cineric Creative and Star Sands Production. It was produced by Eric Nyari, Hanna Aqvilin and Shiori Itō. It is executive produced by Nina L. Diaz and Liza Burnett Fefferman on behalf of MTV Documentary Films; Robina Riccitiello, Josh Peters and Mitsunobu Kawamura.
MTV Documentary Films also saw its short documentary I Am Ready, Warden make the Oscar shortlist announced on Tuesday. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Smriti Mundhra (St. Louis Superman) directed the film that focuses on John Henry Ramirez, a man awaiting execution in Texas after his conviction for murder.
“MTV Documentary Films has worked with high-profile filmmakers on timely stories that have garnered five Oscar nominations, 10 Oscar shortlists, a Peabody Award, two Emmy-nominations and two Emmy wins,” the company notes. Its documentary feature The Eternal Memory, directed by Maite Alberdi, and its short documentary The ABCs of Book Banning, directed by Sheila Nevins, both earned Oscar nominations in 2024.
MTV Documentary Films scored Oscar nominations in recent years with Ascension, directed by Jessica Kingdon; St. Louis Superman, directed by Sami Khan and Smriti Mundhra, and Hunger Ward, directed by Skye Fitzgerald.
