The Contestant, a “gut-churning” true story about one of the world’s first reality TV stars, is now streaming on BBC iPlayer.
The documentary, which premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival, follows the 1998 story of aspiring comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu, who was told he was going to take part in a TV challenge.
After being taken to a room, he was asked to strip naked and given a stack of magazines, with his challenge being to enter competitions in their pages to win everything he needed to survive, from food to clothes to appliances.
His goal was to enter competitions until he met the prize goal of one million yen – about £5,000 at the time.
Tomoaki was nicknamed ‘Nasubi’ (the Japanese word for ‘aubergine’) during his time on the show, due to his genitals being obscured by an emoji of the vegetable in live broadcasts.
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He ended up staying in the room for 15 months and remained naked for the entire time, with each week of his life edited into a segment that was broadcast to millions of viewers each week.
Director Clair Titley said she decided to tell Nasubi’s story after going down an “internet rabbit hole”.
“I found that a lot of what I had come across was almost derogatory. Nothing had really talked about Nasubi’s story in depth,” she told BBC News last year.
“[I had] all these questions such as, why did he stay in there, and what effect it had on him. So I contacted him with that premise, that I wanted to make a film about his experience.”
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The documentary currently holds a 92% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising the telling of the both bizarre and cruel story of an early reality TV star.
The Atlantic wrote: “What’s most remarkable about The Contestant now is how its subject managed to regain his faith in human nature, despite everything he endured.”
Meanwhile, Variety praised a mid-documentary twist in the story, writing: “All of a sudden, the film goes from mildly interesting to downright gut-churning, an emotional territory it seldom leaves from there on out.”
The Contestant is streaming now on BBC iPlayer.
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Rachel Finn is a freelance sub-editor at Digital Spy.
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