Is a single strawberry in five layers of plastic a sign of care? At what cost?

In Japan, packaging is an art form. A biscuit is wrapped in plastic, a single strawberry rests within five layers of packaging, and on every street corner there is a flashing vending machine with colourful PET bottles. A country whose spiritual relationship with the material world has been a source of admiration over the centuries has become one of the world’s biggest hidden contributors to plastic pollution. How did caring turn into wastefulness?

Directors Sybilla Patrizia and Clementine Nuttall weave together the stories of refuse collectors and packaging masters. The camera moves from garbage trucks adorned with mascots to the roaring furnaces of Tokyo’s incineration plants, and to people who are, quite literally, up to their necks in this mess. The film crew arrives at a rural village that has decided to live without trash and discovers ideas that could save us from a future wrapped in plastic. This carefully and beautifully crafted film does not resort to finger-pointing but looks boldly towards the future. What do we keep, what do we throw away, and what must we change to still have a planet tomorrow? The film’s title sounds like Mariya Takeuchi’s 1984 pop hit, but this time, the love is far from innocent.

Mikk Granström