Directed by Mitsuo Sato and Kyoichi Yamaoka  Japan, 1985, 16mm, color, 110 min.  Japanese with English subtitles 
 
This extraordinary documentary is an unflinching record of the workers’ struggle during Japan’s economic rebirth in the 1980s, centered on Tokyo’s San’ya “yoseba”—a slum community dating from the 19th century where day laborers lived in terrible conditions while they sought work.  
 
Conceived of as a weapon in the workers’ struggle, Yama exposed the role of the yakuza, the Japanese elite, and corporations participating in the violent and systematic exploitation of the labor class amidst the construction boom of the time. Unresolved issues around labor rights, class discrimination, corruption, foreign workers’ rights, police violence and the stench of re-emergent fascism all rear their ugly heads in this powerful chronicle made at tremendous risk by the filmmakers.  
 
Indeed, the film begins with the aftermath of the fatal stabbing of the film’s original director, Mitsuo Sato, by a member of a right-wing imperialist yakuza clan on December 22, 1984. The film was completed by a collective, headed by director Kyoichi Yamaoka, who himself was also murdered soon after its completion.  
 
Still as relevant as ever, Yama is a vital record of a still unresolved chapter of postwar Japanese history that sheds light on the dark underbelly of labor and power relations under capitalism.  
 
– Adapted from Berlinale 2018 note