# Distance (DISTANCE) (2001 film)
**Distance** (ディスタンス) is a 2001 Japanese drama film directed, written, and edited by [Hirokazu Kore-eda](https://www.edgepedia.org/hirokazu-kore-eda). It follows four relatives of perpetrators of a cult mass murder who meet annually at the lake where the ashes of their cult-member relatives—who were perpetrators of the massacre—were scattered, and spend an unexpected night with a former cult member.[13](https://www.noahcowanfilm.com/japanese-cinema/distance) The film was selected In Competition at the 54th Cannes Film Festival and released in Japan on May 26, 2001.[1](https://eiga.com/movie/40403/) • [2](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/distance/)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Director, writer, editor | Hirokazu Kore-eda, his third feature after *Maborosi* (1995) and *After Life* (1998)[1](https://eiga.com/movie/40403/) • [3](https://www.cinematoday.jp/movie/T0000380) |
| Runtime and format | 132 minutes; 35 mm, color, Europa Vista[3](https://www.cinematoday.jp/movie/T0000380) |
| Festival | In Competition, 54th Cannes Film Festival, 2001[2](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/distance/) |
| Japanese release | May 26, 2001; Cannes premiere May 10, 2001[1](https://eiga.com/movie/40403/) • [4](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278413/releaseinfo/) |
| Principal cast | ARATA, Yusuke Iseya, Susumu Terajima, Yui Natsukawa, Tadanobu Asano, Ryo, Kenichi Endo, Baijaku Nakamura[3](https://www.cinematoday.jp/movie/T0000380) |
| Production | TV Man Union, Engine Film, Cine Rocket, and IMAGICA, by the "Distance" Production Committee[3](https://www.cinematoday.jp/movie/T0000380) |
| Style | Shot entirely handheld, with no artificial lighting and no music[3](https://www.cinematoday.jp/movie/T0000380) |
## Spoilers
### Plot
The cult "Ark of Truth" (真理の箱舟) carries out an indiscriminate mass murder by introducing a new virus into the public water supply. The five perpetrators are then killed by the cult itself. Three years later, four relatives of the perpetrators, Atsushi (ARATA), Masaru (Yusuke Iseya), Kiyoka (Yui Natsukawa), and Makoto (Susumu Terajima), gather once a year at the lakeside to pray for the dead. That year an accident strands them, and together with Sakata ([Tadanobu Asano](https://www.edgepedia.org/tadanobu-asano)), a former cult member who has lost his motorbike, they spend a night in the lodge where the believers once lived.[3](https://www.cinematoday.jp/movie/T0000380) • [1](https://eiga.com/movie/40403/)
The Cannes Festival synopsis describes the event as a massacre by followers of an apocalyptic sect that leaves more than a hundred dead, including the executioners slain by fellow cult members, and introduces the man the four meet as someone who was with the executioners until the moment the killing began.[2](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/distance/) The Rotterdam festival program instead describes the perpetrators as having committed collective suicide and identifies the former member, Koichi, as the only survivor of the slaughter.[5](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2002/films/distance)
## Production and style
Kore-eda shot the film entirely with a handheld camera and used no artificial lighting and no music at all, a documentary-like approach the Japanese trade press linked to the film's quiet, severe treatment of the perpetrators' families.[3](https://www.cinematoday.jp/movie/T0000380) [Cinematography](https://www.edgepedia.org/cinematography) was by Yutaka Yamazaki, production design by Toshihiro Isomi, and the assistant directors included Miwa Nishikawa, later a director in her own right.[6](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/352) • [3](https://www.cinematoday.jp/movie/T0000380) Masayuki Akieda produced, with TV Man Union, Engine Film, Cine Rocket, and IMAGICA as production companies.[3](https://www.cinematoday.jp/movie/T0000380) • [7](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/distance_2001)
## Background and reception
The [Rotterdam](https://www.edgepedia.org/rotterdam) program states that the film was inspired by a real event: the [Aum Shinrikyo](https://www.edgepedia.org/aum-shinrikyo) cult's poison gas attack in the Tokyo underground six years earlier, and that Kore-eda, whose interest and sympathy lay with the relatives and their mourning, deliberately underplayed the motives of the culprits.[5](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2002/films/distance) A scholarly review in the *Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies* places *Distance* among the Japanese films that responded to the March 1995 sarin attack, an event that shook Japan's faith in itself and prompted artistic attempts to understand the conditions that made Aum possible.[8](https://mail.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol8/iss3/iles1.html)
After the acclaim that *After Life* had earned abroad, expectations were high. Peter Bradshaw, film critic for *The Guardian*, reviewed the film at the Edinburgh festival in August 2001 and gave it three stars, finding it diffuse and uncertain in tone compared with its predecessor, but allowing that it had "something melancholy and resonant" and its own subtle, unsettling effect.[9](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/aug/22/artsfeatures) The film circulated widely on the festival circuit: after Cannes it screened at Edinburgh (August 21, 2001), Toronto (September 10, 2001), and Rotterdam (January 27, 2002), and received a French theatrical release on February 27, 2002 through ID Distribution.[4](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278413/releaseinfo/) • [10](https://www.offi.fr/cinema/evenement/distance-8498.html)
## Place in Kore-eda's career
*Distance* was Kore-eda's third feature and his second film selected for the Cannes competition, following *Maborosi*, which won a Golden Osella at Venice in 1995, and *After Life* (1998), which was distributed in more than 30 countries.[11](https://cdn.festival-cannes.com/media/uploads/2023/05/159499.pdf) His next film, *Nobody Knows* (2004), brought Yagira Yuya the Cannes Best Actor Award as the youngest recipient ever at that festival.[11](https://cdn.festival-cannes.com/media/uploads/2023/05/159499.pdf) A Japanese academic study of water imagery in Kore-eda's work notes that *Distance* is the only one of his first ten feature films without a bathing scene, treating this absence as a meaningful marker within the director's recurring water theme system.[12](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jscsconference/11/0/11_5/_pdf/-char/en)
## References
1. [DISTANCE ディスタンス：作品情報・キャスト・あらすじ, 映画.com](https://eiga.com/movie/40403/)
2. [DISTANCE, Festival de Cannes](https://www.festival-cannes.com/en/f/distance/)
3. [DISTANCE／ディスタンス (2001)：キャスト・あらすじ・作品情報, シネマトゥデイ](https://www.cinematoday.jp/movie/T0000380)
4. [Distance (2001) Release info, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278413/releaseinfo/)
5. [Distance, International Film Festival Rotterdam 2002](https://iffr.com/en/iffr/2002/films/distance)
6. [ディスタンス, 武蔵野美術大学 美術館・図書館 映像作品データベース](https://img-lib.musabi.ac.jp/search/document/detail-work/352)
7. [Distance (2001), Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/distance_2001)
8. [Timothy Iles (2008). Reconfiguring History II: Terror and Tragedy, ejcjs](https://mail.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol8/iss3/iles1.html)
9. [Peter Bradshaw (2001). Distance, review, The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/aug/22/artsfeatures)
10. [Distance, L'Officiel des spectacles](https://www.offi.fr/cinema/evenement/distance-8498.html)
11. [Kore-eda Hirokazu, director biography, Festival de Cannes](https://cdn.festival-cannes.com/media/uploads/2023/05/159499.pdf)
12. [伊藤弘了. 是枝裕和『ディスタンス』における水の主題系, J-Stage](https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jscsconference/11/0/11_5/_pdf/-char/en)
13. [Distance, Noah Cowan](https://www.noahcowanfilm.com/japanese-cinema/distance)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2000s › Biographical and historical drama films 2000s › Released 2000 to 2005*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license