Black Box Delivery: The Challenges of Creating and Distributing an Award-winning Documentary

YCAPS is pleased to host a special evening conversation with Shiori Itō, award-winning journalist, filmmaker, and director of the Oscar and Academy Awards-nominated 2024 documentary Black Box Diaries, alongside producer Eric Nyari. After showings in the United States and the United Kingdom, Black Box Dairies won a Peabody Award and was nominated for Best Documentary Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards. In December 2025, it began showing in Japan. This event offers an exceptional opportunity to meet the makers of the film and explore how the documentary was developed, produced, and brought to international audiences, contributing to global discourse on gender justice, legal reform, and independent filmmaking in Japan.

While Black Box Diaries documents Itō’s personal fight for accountability within Japan’s judicial system, this event will focus on the craft and process behind the film. Itō and Nyari will discuss how the documentary was conceptualized, how sensitive investigative material was transformed into a cinematic narrative, how the team collaborated to shape the emotional and narrative tone, and how they navigated distribution channels that ultimately led to major festival screenings and an Academy Award nomination. Their conversation will illuminate the challenges of producing non-fiction film within Japan’s media environment and the strategies that enabled Black Box Diaries to resonate beyond national borders.

The speakers will also address the broader landscape of Japanese documentary production, including financing structures, editorial constraints, and opportunities for international co-production. Their reflections will be valuable for those interested in journalism, filmmaking, gender studies, and cultural change, as well as practitioners engaged in cross-border storytelling and media advocacy.

YCAPS is grateful to What the Dickens! for providing exclusive use of the venue for this event. The bar and kitchen will be open throughout the evening, allowing attendees to enjoy food and drinks during the program. Please come early to grab a bite or drink, chat with the speaker, and get to know fellow audience members.

Pre-registration is not required. The venue comfortably holds 70 people, and admission will be on a first-come, first-served basis.

*There is an optional pre-registration list for those who would like priority entrance into the venue. (pre-registration list will be allowed entry at 6:00pm, while non-registered guest entry begins at 6:15 pm)

Pre-registration (optional) at this Google form.

Date: Monday, January 26, 2026

Time: 18:15–21:00 (Doors open at 18:15 for general admittance)

Venue: What the Dickens!

ROOB6 Building 4th floor, Ebisunishi, 1 Chome-13-3, Shibuya, Tokyo 150-0021

〒150-0021 東京都渋谷区恵比寿西１丁目１３－３　ＲＯＯＢ６ビル 4階

Google Maps: https://share.google/fXIdcMQH6qHUAajV8

Schedule:

• 18:15 Doors open
• 18:15–19:00 Casual conversation & networking social
• 19:00–20:15 Discussion with Shiori Itō and Eric Nyari
• 20:15–21:00 Informal conversation and networking
• *Participants will be able to buy food and drinks throughout the event.

Speakers:

Shiori Itō is an Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated documentary filmmaker, journalist and writer, and the co-founder of Hanashi Films. Named one of TIME magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in 2020, she focuses on gender-based human rights issues through investigative storytelling.

Her debut feature documentary, Black Box Diaries, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and went on to win a Peabody Award, receive Oscar and BAFTA nominations, earn more than twenty international prizes, and screen in over sixty countries. She has directed documentaries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with work appearing on major outlets such as Reuters, BBC, Al Jazeera, and The Economist.

Itō is also the author of Black Box (2017), which exposed systemic sexism in Japan’s legal system and won the Free Press Association of Japan’s Best Journalism Award. Her most recent book, Swim Naked (2023), explores themes of resilience and vulnerability.

She was named One Young World’s Journalist of the Year in 2022 and serves as an ambassador for NO MORE. Itō regularly gives talks and lectures internationally, sharing her experiences to support and inspire audiences worldwide.

Eric Nyari is a Tokyo and New York-based film producer whose work spans narrative features, documentaries, and major 4K restoration projects. He is a two-time Academy Award nominee, a BAFTA nominee, and a Peabody Award recipient, with a career dedicated to bringing powerful stories and cinematic heritage to global audiences.

Nyari has collaborated extensively with The Film Foundation, led by Martin Scorsese, contributing to the 4K restorations of iconic Japanese classics such as Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff, and A Story from Chikamatsu, as well as Hiroshi Inagaki’s The Rickshaw Man. He has also partnered with leading Japanese studios, including Shochiku, KADOKAWA, and Nikkatsu, on the restorations of films such as Yasujirō Ozu’s Late Spring and Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain. His restoration work has played a key role in preserving and revitalizing Japan’s cinematic legacy for new generations.

As a producer in Japan, Nyari has supported a wide range of acclaimed projects, including Amir Naderi’s CUT, Yoshihisa Tsubota’s The Shell Collector, Stephen Nomura Schible’s Ryuichi Sakamoto: CODA, Yoichiro Okutani’s Odoriko, Takeshi Fukunaga’s AINU MOSIR and Mountain Woman, Emma Ryan Yamazaki’s Koshien: Japan’s Field of Dreams and Elementary, Neo Sora’s Ryuichi Sakamoto | OPUS, and Tetsuichiro Tsuta’s The Black Ox.

In 2024, Nyari produced Neo Sora’s debut feature film HAPPYEND, which premiered at the Venice International Film Festival and earned multiple international awards. In 2025, he achieved a historic milestone when two films he produced, Shiori Ito’s Black Box Diaries and Emma Ryan Yamazaki’s Instruments of a Beating Heart, were simultaneously nominated for Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Feature and Best Documentary Short categories. This marked the first time Japanese films were nominated in both documentary categories in the same year, and the first time in more than three decades that a single producer earned nominations across both categories.

Cost: Free of charge. All bar and kitchen proceeds support the venue.
Format: This event will be off-the-record. Questions are encouraged
Moderator(s): Waka Ikeda