AT THE TRIANGLE INTERSECTION

Fukushima Evacuees Renegotiate Their Future

Venue(s): Pole-Pole Higashi Nakano
From April 4 (Sat), 2026
Language: Japanese with English subtitles
Official website: sankakuya-film.jp/
Theater website: pole2.co.jp/
Theater website: pole2.co.jp/address
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPmbp06r0Gg
Tariff: General: ￥1,900, University students: ￥1,200, Senior: ￥1,200, Handicapped/Students (Junior-high/High school): ￥1,000, Students (Elementary school): ￥700
Talk event: Please check with the theater.

Title: 三角屋の交差点で (Sankakuya no Kosaten de)
Director: Toru Yamada (山田徹)
Duration: 95 min

Seven years after the Tohoku Earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, a family from Namie, which remains heavily contaminated and restricted even today, struggles to rebuild their lives in this moving documentary that premiered at last year’s Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival. At the Triangle Intersection is now screening with English subtitles.

Filmmaker Toru Yamada observes the evacuated family for three years, tracing the gradual, often imperceptible shifts within the household as they settle into public housing in Iwaki. The reserved patriarch, Takemasa, leaves much of his 99-year-old mother’s care to his wife, Shigeko. Long defined by her role as daughter-in-law, Shigeko begins to reconsider the expectations that have structured her life.

There is little overt drama in At the Triangle Intersection, as the trio navigate the long-term impact of the tiple tragedy. Instead, the film focuses on the daily negotiations of care, obligation, and distance. The question of whether to return or to rebuild elsewhere lingers, but never resolves into a clear decision. What emerges instead is a sense of suspension.

Keeping a measured, observational distance, Yamada presents the family less as a unified entity than as an intersection of individuals moving at different speeds. The idea of “home” becomes increasingly unstable. Positioned between past and future, the family lingers in that uncertain middle ground, where identities are neither fully lost nor fully remade.

Theaters
Tokyo: Pole Pole Higashi-Nakano, from April 4, 2026
Kanagawa: Odawara Cinema, Dates to be annouced
Fukushima: Forum Fukushima, from May 22, 2026
Miyagi: Forum Sendai, from May 29, 2026
Yamagata: Forum Yamagata, from May 29, 2026

Pole-Pole Higashi Nakano