A doctor's daughter locked away for decades — what should the family have done?

In 1992, Fujino Tomoaki pressed record. He was on the verge of leaving the home he shared with his parents and older sister. The moment the tape began to roll, his sister's voice filled it — screaming, speaking words no one could understand. That was how Fujino began documenting his sister's years consumed by hallucinations and delusions, and the years his family spent watching her.

What started as an impulse to leave some record before he walked out the door ultimately became a film that demanded to be seen. The documentary, which opened in South Korea on Wednesday, spans more than two decades in the lives of a woman with schizophrenia and the family around her. Its title: "What Should We Have Done?"

His sister's illness had its first signs nine years before Fujino picked up that recorder. She was in her mid-20s at the time, a medical student. One evening, after dinner, she lay down and suddenly cried out — her first episode. Their parents were both professors, one specializing in medicine and the other in pharmacology. They took her to a psychiatrist, who told them there was nothing wrong with her and warned that hospitalizing her might cause psychological harm. That, at least, was what the parents later said.

The house was never quiet. There were nights when his sister burst into his room in the early hours, sobbing and screaming. Arguments never stopped. To anyone watching, she was clearly far from well. Yet even so, the parents blocked every opportunity for professional treatment or counseling. As medical experts, they offered one justification after another — dismissing the research as unconvincing, among other reasons.

That unchanged reality persisted for more than 20 years. During that time, the younger brother turned a camera on his family while the parents padlocked the front door so their daughter could not leave. "This isn't just my sister's problem," she says in the film. "It's Mom and Dad's problem." She remained locked at home without professional treatment until she was hospitalized in 2008.

The voices and images Fujino captured with the intention of preserving everything show, without embellishment, how the choices made by the family of a person with schizophrenia shaped one woman's life and what those choices ultimately cost her. From 80 hours of footage recorded over two decades, the director assembled a film of just over 100 minutes. He had resolved never to release it while his sister was alive. After she died following a battle with cancer, he began preparing it in earnest for the world to see.

Stripping away music and unnecessary subtitles, the director wanted audiences to watch, feel and judge for themselves — based on the images alone. Not schizophrenia as a condition, not a sister who had it, but the choices made by the family of a daughter and sister living with it.

Speaking at an interview Wednesday at the At9film offices in Dongjak-gu, Seoul, Fujino said the decision to make the documentary took shape after his sister was hospitalized in 2008. "She was discharged in an improved condition. I thought, since I can now show not only the suffering but also her recovery, I should make this into a documentary," he said. "Of course, I was clear that it could not be released while my sister was still alive."

Before the film's story begins in earnest, it makes clear that it is not an attempt to explain why his sister developed schizophrenia or what the illness is. During production, Fujino sought a psychiatric review of the film but was turned down. In hindsight, he considered that a fortunate outcome — the rejection only sharpened his original intent to tell the story of the family surrounding his sister. Every question the film asks with its title, "What should we have done?", is directed squarely at the family.

"This film is a record of whether the family responded properly to my sister's illness, and the focus is on me and my parents," Fujino said. "It is not a story centered on my sister. I wanted to tell the story of how my parents and I failed to cope."

In the film, Fujino openly expresses his frustration at his parents' failure to pursue active treatment for his sister. When he confronts them — insisting that as parents they should have been able to fix this — the only answer he gets is a maddening "We're doctors, we know what to do." His parents had already decided on their answer and closed off every other possibility. His sister was locked in place, her life frozen. In his narration, Fujino puts it plainly: "Having doctors as parents was the worst possible situation."

The rapid improvement his sister showed after just three months of treatment following her hospitalization speaks for itself as a verdict on his parents' choices. A person who could have recovered lost decades — pushed aside by her parents' needless self-certainty, their fear of what others might think, or their anxiety about her future. Fujino called that a "crime."

"My sister wasted the potential and time she had because of the people around her," Fujino said. "In a sense, my parents committed a crime by causing my sister to lose her years, and I believed it was not ethically right to conceal that fact."

But Fujino's deeply personal family history does not end as simply a story of a family that refused treatment for a daughter with schizophrenia. After her condition improved, his sister traveled with the family, watched fireworks, and flashed a bright V-sign at the camera pointed her way.

At the end of what seemed like an endless, uncontrollable dark tunnel — where nothing could be understood and no situation made sense — small, sunlit moments of happiness bloom. His sister's life, long trapped within the walls of one family and existing like a ticking time bomb, finds hope in its reconnection with the world. The film "What Should We Have Done?" carries within it not only a question but a wish to reach someone, somewhere, passing through a similar darkness.

"I don't know how South Korean society handles schizophrenia, but if it isn't so different from Japan, 'What Should We Have Done?' is a film that can let those directly affected, and their families, set down the burdens they have been carrying," Fujino said. "I believe it will be a film that shows an opportunity to feel lighter — socially and legally."