Directed by Julien Faraut | Documentary | French and Japanese with subtitles | 100 mins | France | 2021
Meet the former players of the Japanese women’s volleyball team. Now in their 70s, they used to be known as the « Witches of the Orient » because of their seemingly supernatural powers on the courts.
From the formation of the squad in the late 1950s as a worker’s team at a textile factory, right up until their triumph at the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, their memories and true magic from long ago bubble up into a heady brew where fact and fable fly hand in hand.
The joy of the Witches’ success is infectious … exactly like what our weary world needs right now MOMA
The film's fanciful archival montages shrewdly demonstrate the ways in which memory and art seamlessly combine to document reality SLANT MAGAZINE
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