“Nowhere to Go but Everywhere” was selected as a finalist in this year’s ShortList Film Festival, presented by TheWrap. You can watch the films and vote for your favorite here.
Yasuo Takamatsu, a devoted husband who tragically lost his wife in the Japanese Tsunami of 2011, is the emotional center of the excellent and moving documentary short film “Nowhere to Go But Everywhere,” which is a finalist in TheWrap’s ShortList Film Festival 2023.
The catastrophic Tsunami, which left almost 20,000 people dead and nearly half a million homeless, was triggered by an underwater earthquake that occurred off the eastern coast of Japan on March 11, 2011. Months after the tragedy, Takamatsu was able to recover his wife’s phone in the parking lot of the bank where she worked.
Takamatsu found the pink flip phone with an unsent text message he didn’t receive: “So much tsunami,” it read. Unfortunately, Takamatsu hasn’t found anything else since then.
In 2013, Takamatsu started scuba diving as a last resort to locate his wife’s body after she disappeared in Onagawa, one of the areas most severely affected by the disaster.
As directors Masako Tsumura and Erik Shirai explain, “He processed his grief by learning to dive and search for her in the same ocean that took her away from him. Under the infinite layers of the ocean, he explores yet to find his wife, but unexpectedly has found solace.”
In 2018, the filmmakers where busy developing their feature film “Umi,” and then happened to read the New York Times Magazine story about Takamatsu.
“We were so emotionally moved by his unbelievable story that we decided to base our fiction film on his experience,” Tsumura told TheWrap. “We were compelled to meet him and were able to secure a meeting through the diving shop where he trained.”
Tsumura added: “He arrived before us and we were astonished to be greeted by his gentle and humble demeanor.”
The filmmakers felt it would be inappropriate to ask Takamatsu questions about his wife so they broke the ice by asking him about his diving and what he saw in the ocean. Initially, Takamatsu’s responses were often followed by an uncomfortable silence.
“But as we developed a deeper relationship with him, he slowly began to fill the silence with life before the tsunami, the memories he was left with and his life long project to fulfill his wife’s dying wish,” Tsumura said.
When the COVID pandemic hit, the filmmakers discovered that Takamatsu still continued to dive and search for his wife while the rest of the world was under lockdown. The filmmakers saw their opportunity to document Takamatsu’s search for his wife. “It opened up a space for us to look beyond our own existence during difficult times,” Tsumura said.
Coming up with a shooting schedule during COVID became challenging for the filmmakers because foreigners from outside the region weren’t welcome in that part of Japan.
But the COVID protocol wasn’t the only challenge the filmmakers faced as underwater production was also very difficult. The filmmakers also had to postpone the shoot a couple of times due to the harsh weather conditions at the time.
“The underwater in the region is difficult because of strong currents, cold temperature and low visibility, but we got to work with the best underwater cinematographers in Japan,” Tsumura said.
According to Tsumura, Takamatsu still dives every week to this very day. “He has found household items, somebody’s belongings, fishing instruments and sunken cars,” Tsumura said.
The 2023 ShortList Film Festival runs online from June 28 – July 12, honoring the top award-winning short films that have premiered at major festivals in the past year. Watch the finalists and vote for your favorite here.