The chilly heir from Doomsday Cult-Turned-Jomestic Terrorist’s Aum Shinrikyo is now captured on the 30th anniversary of their Tokyo attack.
Documentary ”Aum: Cult at the end of the world“Together by Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto, says the shocking story of Aum Shinrikyo, a group founded by former yoga teacher Shoko Asahara. Aum Shinrikyo later released a deadly nerve gas in Tokyo’s subway system in 1995. film Premiere at Sundance 2023.
The official synopsis teases how “Japan’s police and the media turned an eye” to the rising terrorist organization that began to store mass destruction of mass destruction from the collapsed Soviet Union. The documentary is billed as a “potent reminder of how dangerous uncontrolled fanaticism can be.”
The feature includes rare archive films and an interview with one of the founder Asahara’s previously highly ranked disciples. “Aum: The cult at the end of the world” is loosely based on book “The cult at the end of the world” by David E Kaplan and Andrew Marshall, both of which are shown in the film.
Indieviews 2023 Sundance Review Noted how partly Blind Chizuo Matsumoto redirected himself as Guru Shoko Asahara and “shouted at the most vulnerable people he could find” to build Aum Shinrikyo.
“Braun and Yanagimoto’s film make scary clear that AUM was a local threat long before they were notorious on the world stage,” wrote IndieWire critic David Ehrlich, “and all the documentary’s most painful sections on the semi-lost people who died before the police were forced to take the cult in earnest; A heartbreaking chapter on Yoshiyuki Kono, which was incorrectly blamed for the test run that killed seven people (including his wife and two dogs) in Matsumoto the year before.
Co -director Braun previously produced documentaries “Crip Camp”, “Fire of Love” and “The Devil Next Door” as senior vice president at Submarine Deluxe. “Aum: The Cult at the end of the world” is both Braun and Yanagimoto’s director.
“This is a very sensitive subject in Japan. We wanted to tell the story correctly, ”said co-director Yanagimoto in a press release. “From early on, we had a clear vision stylistically, cinematic and storytelling about what we wanted the film to be. It did not change. But how it reasoned with cult movements now came after we started. … I think one of the lessons we can take from this is that almost no one looked at AUM’s dark side. The whole truth was right in front of us. And I think that’s what happens today. While we talk about this or the political movement, there may be a lot of potential danger. Media tends to be drawn to something flashy, to get more readers or an audience. There is so much distraction and we do not pay attention to what we should pay attention to. ”
Braun added by Aum founder Asahara, “I think the truth is that he was quite one-dimensional. There is not much more for him than hatred and anger. What is more convincing is how the world reacted to the manipulation he caused and the chaos he sowed. The influence he had was so specific for that time in Japan. What he said at that time hit hard for many people. It is not so easy to put a finger on what made him charismatic. I think he was very knowledgeable, a coherent predator. His move to Russia is an example of that – that country had literally collapsed and he thought, “I can fill a void.” If he joined today, would he have the same impact? Probably not. ”
“AUM: The cult at the end of the world” will meet theaters on Wednesday, March 19 from Greenwich Entertainment and will be available on digital platforms on Friday 28 March. Check out the trailer, an indieview exclusive, below.
