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DOCUMENTARY

Laugh It Away and Say Goodbye

DOCUMENTARY 2010 55 min Episode(s): 1 english English
Winner of Best News Documentary at Monte-Carlo TV Festival 2011
Grand Prize at The Age of Regionalism Video Festival 2011
Grand Prize at “Era of Local” TV Festival 2010


Small and medium-sized businesses are the back bones of Japan that support the economy from the bottom-up. However, as work decreased sharply after the Lehman Shock, many life changes were in order for smaller businesses.

Without the work of numerous subcontractors, the manufacturing of Toyota cars, Japan’s top brand, would simply not be possible.

This documentary takes an up-close and personal look at a tiny Toyota subcontractor, four steps down the supply chain. In a 7.5 square-meter factory, the owner, a lively 56-year-old woman, works with two other housewives who live nearby. This work consists of gluing small parts together.

All seems well in this cozy factory until one day in the fall of 2008, a global recession is triggered by the fall of Lehman Brothers. Suddenly, sales of Toyota cars dry up.

How does the owner of this tiny factory deal with the crisis?

Despite the grim reality, the factory is always filled with laughter.

What can we learn from this upbeat story of business closure?

Click here to preview the program!

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