Feather Films

Just after midnight on 10 March 1945, the US launched an air-based attack on eastern Tokyo; continuing until morning, the raid left more than 100,000 people dead and a quarter of the city eradicated. Unlike their loved ones, Hiroshi Hoshino, Michiko Kiyooka and Minoru Tsukiyama managed to emerge from the bombings. Now in their twilight years, they wish for nothing more than recognition and reparations for those who, like them, had been indelibly harmed by the war – but the Japanese government and even their fellow citizens seem disinclined to acknowledge the past.

In a world filled with beautiful and harmonious music, elderly Vernon always seems to strike the wrong note.

As dusk approaches and workers stream out of the city, thousands of individuals are about the begins their day’s work. They shuffle through subterranean car parks, sprawling shopping centers and soaring office towers, leaving behind a trail of gleaming floors and emptied waste paper baskets. They are the cleaners – an invisible and underpaid army whose necessary work goes unnoticed.In Lessons From The Night we spend a night with Maia, who reflects on life, work and toilet bowls as we follow her nightly cleaning round through silent empty spaces. As she works, she reveals some of the secrets of the city – the traces of human presence that we leave behind each day – and of her former life in Bulgaria. Lessons From The Night is both a homage to the menial worker and an existential film about cleaning.