Digital technologies, and the new possibilities they brought, led to the emergence of a new genre in Japanese cinema; one that uses the "authentic" quality of documentary within fictional narratives. In this article, Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano analyses three films that employ this framework: Dare Mo Shiranai/Nobody Knows by Kore'eda Hirokazu, Tarachime by Kawase Naomi, and Atarashi Kamisama/The New God by Tsuchiya Yutaka. These works blend documentary and fiction traditions to explore the idea of cinematic "reality" via the aesthetic of digital production.

Key words: video document, video letters, documentary, reality effect