North Cormorant Island (John Williams, 2025)

North Cormorant Island, can be slotted into that perhaps overused category of gentle cinema, but it’s so much more than that. 

Welshman John Williams (Not that one), filmed this documentary about a remote Japanese fishing village, Kitaushima, meaning North Cormorant Island, over 10 years. The village itself was once prosperous from rice-farming, fishing and raising cattle. Then a road was built, with the arrival of the road came the departure of the young. Leaving a majority of elderly residents. The film follows the ebb and flow of several residents and families, from an 89 year old farmer, still working the land and fixing his machines to a family with generations of fishermen who’s methods are considered outdated and who’s catch is dwindling.

Now this may strike potential viewers as being a sad film about a dwindling community, and of course some aspects are, naturally, but it’s also a film full of resilience, dignity and a strong sense of community. One of the residents even says he left for Tokyo but missed his small village so much he had to return. The film is relaxing and gentle and at many points very funny, but it masterfully avoids overly romanticising the remote, simple and traditional way of life that many on social media express a longing for- (re: the rise of “tradwives”), instead opting to show a true display of how these lives progress over the 10 years. This life can be extremely hard: cats die, people get sick, winter comes, the rice patties are planted and life goes on, but so do the people.

The film has as second interesting parallel strand to this observatory way of filmmaking. John Williams, although a welshman, speaks fluent Japanese, and we constantly always hear him talking to his subjects, and of course over the course of ten years, he eventually builds a relationship with the people he interviews, The film takes up the Participatory Mode of documentary. This is what makes the documentary so interesting, you can see in x100 speed Williams go from outsider, interloper to this frozen in time world, to seeming local curiosity, to a friend. We see him meld into the community, at one point he has a Christmas dinner feast with a family he has been filming, after this the family are so open and comfortable with him. It makes for really interesting watching, as the documentary becomes about more than just the village and the passage of time, but relationships that build in that time, it comes off like a very authentic reflection of real life. Eventually Williams, goes from a mere voice, to appearing on camera, this slow build over the ten years to us was quite satisfying. There are always ethical concerns in any documentary where the filmmaker begins to participate, but in this one, it seems more the community completely, naturally, began to envelop Williams, and he becomes a part of their social fabric in front of our eyes. 

Another aspect of the film is the personal view, again this dynamic turns the film into something more. Williams is constantly referring his father and their, at times, tumultuous relationship. His dads village, and the similarities with North Cormorant, his health conditions and mannerisms.  We see a portrait of an absent character develop, perhaps the most important subject, the one we never see but who’s affect hangs over the film. The time he spends in the village becomes, seemingly, a form of catharsis. By looking into this village that seems so set in the past, he can look back in his own. He can look at the big road built in his life that he rode far away from Wales. 

Again, the film is so gentle, the landscape is such a part of the film, it draws you in completely, watching it you feel at ease. The people of the film are great shining lights of what we should be, content and resilient. It’s a great watch and a fantastic ethnographic study. 

We mean this as a compliment… It’s a film where nothing happens… Well, bar that one, most important thing, Life. We see in it’s natural habitat, undisturbed and authentic, life simply happening. A feat many documentary filmmakers would die for.