Film Synopsis:
An inspirational tale of the power of the human spirit over adversity – the adversity of the world’s most outrageous reality TV show.
This is the incredible true story of a man who lived for 15 months trapped inside a small room, naked, starving and alone… and completely unaware that his life was being broadcast on national Japanese TV to over 17 million viewers a week.
In 1998, the same year the US film THE TRUMAN SHOW is released and the same year the TV series BIG BROTHER is devised, an up and coming comedian named Nasubi is invited to an informal audition at a Japanese TV station. When he ‘wins’ he is immediately taken to a car and blindfolded.
The blindfold comes off – he is in a small apartment room. Behind the camera, the show’s producer tells him to take off all his clothes and hand them over. Only then, after he is naked and stranded, is Nasubi told what the show’s premise is: “Can a man live on winning sweepstakes alone?” The producer laughs, and the door is slammed shut. Nasubi will only be freed from the apartment after he wins 1 million yen, ($9,000) worth of prizes. Until then, he must just hope that he can to win enough sustenance to survive.
Nasubi spends 15 months of his life trapped in this apartment, slowly losing his mind and at times coming close to starvation – unaware that, not only are 17 million people watching him, but that the diaries he is writing are bestsellers, he is the star of one of the world’s first internet live streams, and he has become a household name.
He has inadvertently become Japan’s national symbol for the spirit of ‘never giving up’. But When he is finally released, he struggles to settle into his new life and it takes a seismic event to help him find what actually completes him.
This is a story about identity – and about what the essence of being human means to each of us.
