Me and the Cult Leader

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Me and the Cult Leader

2020

1h 54m

Documentary

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Popcornmeter

100%

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10 Reviews

Popcornmeter

Fewer than 50 Ratings

Badly injured during the 1995 Tokyo metro sarin gas terrorist attack by the doomsday cult Aum, director Atsushi Sakahara embarks on an intimate and exacting journey with the cult's executive Hiroshi Araki to record the parallel life paths of the victim and perpetrator.

Jessica Kiang

Variety

04/29/2021

[A] film made all the more heartbreaking because you can never be quite sure who your heart is breaking for.

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Nick Schager

The Daily Beast

06/26/2020

As its subtitle makes plain, Me and the Cult Leader is a portrait of banal evil...

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James Marsh

South China Morning Post

06/03/2021

3/5

Where the film succeeds is in portraying a deeply damaged human being who hitched his wagon to a highly dubious organisation and for whom any notion of distancing himself from this last-gasp sanctuary is too horrifying to contemplate.

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Panos Kotzathanasis

Asian Movie Pulse

07/26/2020

Me and the Cult Leader may be a bit too long, but it is brutally sincere, interesting, dramatic, shocking, and sheds much light to a case, an organization and two radically opposite men, while providing food for much thought. An excellent documentary.

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Ren Scateni

Hyperallergic

07/14/2020

Me and the Cult Leader proves to be a study not just in the possibilities of interpersonal understanding over mass tragedies, but also its limits.

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Musanna Ahmed

Film Inquiry

07/14/2020

Me and the Cult Leader is an excellent documentary in that special league of films in which characters pursue or reject the opportunity for catharsis.

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Atsushi Sakahara

Director

Hiroshi Araki

Actor

Takeshi Sakahara

Actor

Takako Sakahara

Actor

Atsushi Sakahara

Actor

Atsushi Sakahara

Producer

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Synopsis

Badly injured during the 1995 Tokyo metro sarin gas terrorist attack by the doomsday cult Aum, director Atsushi Sakahara embarks on an intimate and exacting journey with the cult's executive Hiroshi Araki to record the parallel life paths of the victim and perpetrator.

Director: Atsushi Sakahara
Producer: Atsushi Sakahara, Etsuko Matsuo
Genre: Documentary
Original Language: English
Runtime: 1h 54m