Camera Japan Rotterdam 2024 Review: ALL THE SONGS WE NEVER SANG Makes For Fine Family Drama

September in the Netherlands means that the Camera Japan Festival is visiting again, first in Rotterdam and a week later in Amsterdam. Primarily it's a film festival, but music and food always have an important role as well. Often there are workshops tied in to several of the titles playing there, for example a whiskey tasting event will accompany a drama about Japanese craft whiskeys. It's therefore a shame that the harbor of Rotterdam doesn't have any pearl oysters in it, because Polish director Chris Ludz' gentle-with-a-bite Japanese family drama All the Songs We Never Sang is good enough to have a pearl diving event attached to it.

In it, we follow 17-year-old Natsumi, who travels to a Japanese island community to live with her estranged aunt Reiko, one of the region's traditional pearl divers. As Natsumi arrives unannounced, the reclusive and cantankerous Reiko isn't initially keen on having the Tokyo-born-and-bred girl stay, but when Natsumi starts helping out with the diving, a tentative bond between the two women grows.

But Natsumi has a secret agenda: she tries to find out why her mother left the island, and why that ruined Reiko's happiness so much. As Natsumi's digging causes old secrets to surface, anger and spite may turn out to be stronger than family relations...

There are many ways in which All the Songs We Never Sang could have become trite or boring, but director Chris Rudz deftly manages to avoid the common pitfalls, and his film remains charming and interesting till the end. Yes, there are jokes and goofy characters on the island, yes the family mystery veers into dark territory right when you expect it, yes there are culture clashes and age clashes... but it's all shown with a lot of heart, with Nagase Miru and Kanô Junko as a pair of believable leads. And while I would have loved to be told more about the Ama traditions of pearl diving (on that part the film stays quite shallow), for the duration of All the Songs We Never Sang I felt as if I was on a holiday to a distant part of the world.

It's generally a feel-good film, but in itself that isn't necessarily a bad thing and I really liked spending time with these characters. Kudos to Chris Rudz for providing me and my wife with a gentle film, some light comedy and drama, and a pleasant enough evening.