The Witches of the Orient offers an exciting look at the rise and rise of a successful Japanese volleyball team in the Fifties and Sixties. It is a sports documentary at heart, but director Julien Faraut pushes those genre boundaries and makes it something more. The ideas of achievement and the pain that inevitably comes with it are explored, as is the idea of aging and reflection. The interviews conducted with the team as they are now are perhaps the most valuable assets of the film. To know what they felt at the time of their string of 258 victories would be one thing, but to see them look back on it having had fifty years pass is what really makes Faraut’s entry in the genre stand out. 

A blend of real footage (both archival and newly captured) and animation is used to create the unique and refreshing visual style that had initially attracted me to the film. Yutaka Yamazaki’s traditionally cinematic approach to photography is just as impressive as the restored video shown of the team in their heyday, and the animation manages to capture the style of anime at the time as well as helping to bring a lot of the drama and emotion that would be difficult to show otherwise. As well as this there are multiple lengthy sequences in which the filmmaker leaves out any interview dialogue and strips cinema down to one of its most essential forms. With only music and picture, the film produces an urgent and even transcendental sensation at times.

I urge anyone to watch this in a cinema. Regardless of your experience with volleyball or sport in general, you will find something positive to take away.

Written by Ben Matthews