Minamata, film screening

Duration: 1h 55m

Credits: Minamata · Directed by Andrew Levitas · USA, UK, UAE · 2020 · 115 min · Starring Johnny Depp, Hiroyuki Sanada · Based on W. Eugene Smith & Aileen M. Smith

Andrew Levitas’s film about the years W. Eugene Smith and Aileen Mioko spent documenting the campaign of the people of Minamata, a city poisoned with mercury.

Tomoko in Her Bath, the photograph W. Eugene Smith made in December 1971, drew international attention to the Japanese city of Minamata, where a Chisso Corporation factory had polluted the waters for decades and thousands of people who ate contaminated seafood had been poisoned with mercury. The Japanese government only officially recognised the disease in 1968.

New York, 1971. Smith has become a recluse, until a commission from Life magazine sends him to Minamata. Andrew Levitas’s film follows the years in which he and Aileen Mioko, who would later become his wife, lived in the community and photographed people living with the illness, protesting and campaigning for compensation.

The film puts the community’s story at its centre: Smith documents the struggle rather than leading it. The score is by Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Part of the Bucharest Photofest 2026 program · WITNESS · 11th edition