Japan in a Day, Tokyo International Film Festival, review Dir: Philip Martin, Gaku Narita. 92 min "The Power of Films, Now!" is the sunny motto of the 25th Tokyo International Film Festival. That's a cute slogan, but also a keenly appropriate one: it is hard to imagine a film more powerful or current than this year's special opening gala. Japan in a Day is a documentary shot by more than 8,000 amateur filmmakers, mainly from Japan, on March 11, 2012: the first anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that devastated the country's east coast, caused a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant and killed at least 15,870 people. Two directors, one English, one Japanese, sifted through the submitted footage and from it cut together this hour-and-a-half-long national portrait. This is the third film in the ..."In a Day" series masterminded by Ridley Scott's production company Scott Free, after the globe-encircling Life in a Day, directed by Kevin Macdonald, and Britain in a Day, screened as part of the BBC's Cultural Olympiad earlier this summer. It begins with volunteers patrolling the country's shattered coastline, adoring close-ups of snuffling, sleeping babies and beery revellers flowing to the railway station to catch the last train home: work, rest and play in one neat vignette. As Philip Martin and Gaku Narita's film zooms outwards, the stories and images broaden in scope, tied together by a score by Nitin Sawnhey that is perhaps slightly more twinkly than required. Much of the footage is so extraordinary, it needs no embellishment. A man living in temporary housing calmly recalls the moment one year ago he found his wife, daughter, father and mother, all in the same car that had been fleeing the tsunami, all dead. Remembering the 12 months since the disaster, he says one of the most profoundly sad things I have ever heard: "Over the last year I have experienced so many things alone." Elsewhere there are signs of rebirth and the energy of youth. A five-year-old girl wields her father's camcorder like a plastic toy sword, squeaking with delight whenever she finds something to point it at: her grandfather's ear, her grumpy teenage sister, a flower pushing its way through the snow. A group of friends visit a grove of flowering cherry trees: the ultimate symbol of renewal. The earlier ...In a Day films were natty exercises in editing and featured more than their fair shares of diverting moments, but this is the first in the series to feel like it carries a significance beyond the fact of its own creation. It's a spirit-stirring tapestry of worst fears realised and wildest dreams fulfilled. One of its most memorable stars is a one-year-old girl, born on the day of the earthquake. Her first birthday is partly spent at an evacuation drill, and she toddles around it, full of potential and hope. Her name is Sakura. It means cherry blossom.