Education
Born in Hiroshima Prefecture, Mori graduated from Rikkyo University, where he appeared in the student films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
森 達也
Born in Hiroshima Prefecture, Mori graduated from Rikkyo University, where he appeared in the student films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
After graduating, he tried acting and even appeared in Kurosawa"s feature debut, the pink film Kandagawa Wars. He worked at other odd jobs before finally finding employment at a television production company in 1989, where he began working on documentaries. One particular scene from A, in which a plainclothes policeman attacks an Aum follower who is then arrested for attacking the actual attacker (Mori was filming from a distance), sparked controversy among the audience watching the film.
The footage was later introduced in court and the "Aum attacker" was acquitted as a result.
Filmmaker Mori was accused of staging the improbable incidents and using actors. Some even refused to believe the footage was shot inside the Aum facilities.
When A2, Mori"s second controversial film about the cult was completed, the filmmaker declared his unwillingness to return to the Aum theme in the future. By his own admission, the efforts invested in production of the two documentaries did not bring him anything more than financial damage and troubles, due to limited scale of theatrical screening and refusal of television broadcasting corporations to licence the films (Mori refused to allow isolated scenes to be used in video sets to Aum-related news broadcasts).
However, in 2010 he wrote a critically acclaimed book on the intervening decade of Aum entitled A3.
His most recent work,, is a collaborative work about the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake. He has also published many books on social issues and the media.