The chilling legacy of doomsday cult-turned-domestic terrorists Aum Shinrikyo is now being captured on the 30th anniversary of their Tokyo attack.
Documentary “AUM: The Cult at the End of the World,” co-directed by Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto, tells the shocking story of Aum Shinrikyo, a group that was founded by former yoga teacher Shoko Asahara. Aum Shinrikyo later unleashed a deadly nerve gas in Tokyo’s subway system in 1995. The film premiered at Sundance in 2023.
The official synopsis teases how “Japan’s police and media turned a blind eye” to the rising terrorist organization that began stockpiling weapons of mass destruction from the collapsed Soviet Union. The documentary is billed as a “potent reminder of just how dangerous unchecked fanaticism can be.”
The feature includes rare archival footage and an interview with one of founder Asahara’s former high-ranking disciples. “AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” is loosely based on book “The Cult at the End of the World” by David E Kaplan and Andrew Marshall, both of whom appear in the film.
IndieWire’s 2023 Sundance review noted how partially blind Chizuo Matsumoto rebranded himself as guru Shoko Asahara and “preyed on the most vulnerable people he could find” to build Aum Shinrikyo.
“Braun and Yanagimoto’s film makes frighteningly clear that Aum was a local threat long before they became infamous on the world stage,” IndieWire critic David Ehrlich wrote, “and all of the documentary’s most painful episodes center on the semi-forgotten people who died before the police were forced to take the cult seriously; not a millisecond of this movie is focused on the specific victims of the subway attack, but there’s a heartbreaking chapter about Yoshiyuki Kono, who was falsely blamed for the test run that killed seven people (including his wife and two dogs) in Matsumoto the previous year.”
Co-director Braun previously executive produced documentaries “Crip Camp,” “Fire of Love,” and “The Devil Next Door” as the Senior Vice President at Submarine Deluxe. “AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” is both Braun and Yanagimoto’s directorial debuts.
“This is a very sensitive subject in Japan. We wanted to tell the story in the right way,” co-director Yanagimoto said in a press statement. “From early on, we had a clear vision stylistically, cinematically and story-wise of what we wanted the film to be. That didn’t change. But how it resonates now with cult movements really came after we started. … I think one of the lessons we can take from this is that almost nobody was looking at Aum’s dark side. All of the truth was right in front of us. And I think that’s what’s going on today. While we’re talking about this or that political movement, there may be a lot of potential danger. Media tends to be drawn to something flashy, to get more readers or an audience. There is so much distraction and we aren’t paying attention to what we should be paying attention to.”
Braun added of Aum founder Asahara, “I think the truth is that he was fairly one-dimensional. There’s not much more to him than hatred and anger. What’s more compelling is the way the world reacted to the manipulation he caused and the chaos he sowed. The impact he had was so specific to that time in Japan. What he was saying at that point in time hit hard for a lot of people. It’s not so easy to put a finger on what made him charismatic. I think he was very savvy, a conniving predator. His move to Russia is an example of that — that country had literally collapsed and he thought, ‘I can fill a void.’ If he came along today, would he have the same impact? Probably not.”
“AUM: The Cult at the End of the World” will hit theaters on Wednesday, March 19 from Greenwich Entertainment and will be available on digital platforms on Friday, March 28. Check out the trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below.
