Film

Sacrifice

• Drama

Seven years after predicting the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake while she was unwittingly involved in a doomsday cult called Sacred Tide, college student Midori (Michiko Gomi) continues to have visions through unusual powers of premonition. Meanwhile at the same school, the duplicitous Toko (Miki Handa), who desperately seeks to escape her mundane life, suspects her classmate Okita (Yuzu Aoki) of being the culprit behind a string of disturbing cat killings and the murder of a classmate. Evoking the natural and human-induced disasters of 3.11 and the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack of 1995, Sacrifice -confidently directed by Taku Tsuboi, who makes his feature film debut-ponders the cyclical nature of violence, trauma, and resentment as a highly original, brooding mystery and supernatural thriller that goes in delightfully unexpected directions.