In this original documentary, filmmaker Daniel Raim explores Yasujiro Ozu’s late work through the objects that were important to him and the people who knew him best.

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1929 • Japan

An unemployed college graduate attempts to trick his family into thinking that he has a job. This fragment, presented without a score, is from a film whose full version has been lost.

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1929 • Japan

A kidnapped boy proves to be more than his abductor can handle in this fragment, presented without a score, from a film whose full version has been lost.

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1930 • Japan
Starring Tatsuo Saito, Kinuyo Tanaka, Chishu Ryu

After the plans of a college student (Tatsuo Saito) to cheat on his final exams by scribbling notes on his shirt go awry, he is left to reassess his life and education and get back on track. Featuring legend...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1930 • Japan

In noirish darkness, a man commits a shocking robbery. But, as we soon learn, this seeming criminal mastermind is actually a sensitive everyman driven to desperation by the need to provide for his family. Unfolding over the course of one night, Yasujiro Oz...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1930 • Japan

In Yasujiro Ozu's WALK CHEERFULLY, which gracefully combines elements of the relationship drama and the gangster story, small-time hood Kenji, a.k.a. Ken the Knife, wants to go straight for good girl Yasue but finds that starting over isn't as simple as ...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1931 • Japan
Starring Tokihiko Okada, Hiroko Kawasaki, Choko Iida

Prominently bearded, resolutely old-fashioned kendo champion Okajima (Tokihiko Okada) struggles to find a job thanks to his peculiar, conservative ways, which inevitably alienate his more progressive pee...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1931 • Japan

Combining three prevalent genres of the day, the student comedy, the salaryman film, and the domestic drama, Ozu created this warmhearted family comedy, and demonstrated that he was truly coming into his own as a cinema craftsman. The setup is simple: Low ...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1932 • Japan

One of Ozu's most popular films, I WAS BORN, BUT . . . is a blithe portrait of the financial and psychological toils of one family, as told from the rascally point of view of a couple of stubborn little boys. For two brothers, the daily struggles of bullie...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1932 • Japan
Starring Ureo Egawa, Kinuyo Tanaka, Tatsuo Saito

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Yasujiro Ozu made a string of comedies dealing with student life, the last of which, WHERE NOW ARE THE DREAMS OF YOUTH?, finds the director exploring increasingly complex t...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1933 • Japan

This formally accomplished and psychologically complex gangster tale pivots on the growing attraction between Joji, a hardened career criminal, and Kazuko, the sweet-natured older sister of a newly initiated young hoodlum, a relationship that provokes the ...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1933 • Japan

The first of many films featuring the endearing single-dad Kihachi (played wonderfully by Takeshi Sakamoto), PASSING FANCY is a humorous and heartfelt study of a close, if fraught, father-son relationship. With an ever more sophisticated visual style and u...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1933 • Japan
Starring Yoshiko Okada, Ureo Egawa, Kinuyo Tanaka

In this powerful, compassionate melodrama, Chikako (Yoshiko Okada) works by day as a typist to help put her brother Ryoichi (Ureo Egawa) through school. What he doesn’t know is that by night she also works ...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1934 • Japan
Starring Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Yukichi Iwata, Den Ohinata

Despite its missing first and last reels, this sensitive domestic drama remains a key work in the refinement of director Yasujiro Ozu’s style in its intimate focus on family dynamics. Following the dea...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1934 • Japan
Starring Takeshi Sakamoto, Choko Iida, Koji (Hideo) Mitsui

In 1959, Yasujiro Ozu remade his 1934 silent classic A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS in color with the celebrated cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (RASHOMON, UGETSU). Setting his later version in a seaside...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1935 • Japan

The final still-extant silent film directed by Yasujiro Ozu is an exquisitely tender portrait of everyday survival in 1930s Japan. Anticipating the neorealist poetry of BICYCLE THIEVES, AN INN IN TOKYO follows unemployed ne’er-do-well Kihachi (Takeshi Saka...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1936 • Japan
Starring Choko Iida, Shinichi Himori, Masao Hayama

Yasujiro Ozu’s first talkie, the uncommonly poignant THE ONLY SON is among the Japanese director’s greatest works. In its simple story about a good-natured mother who gives up everything to ensure her son’...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1937 • Japan
Starring Michiko Kuwano, Tatsuo Saito, Sumiko Kurishima

Yasujiro Ozu puts a witty spin on his recurring theme of generational clash in this sophisticated comedy, which bears the unmistakable influence of Ernst Lubitsch. When modern, liberated Setsuko (Mich...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1941 • Japan
Starring Mieko Takamine, Shin Saburi, Hideo Fujino

Following a three-year break from filmmaking while he completed military service, Yasujiro Ozu returned to directing with this pointed family drama which in many ways anticipates the themes he would explor...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1942 • Japan
Starring Chishu Ryu, Haruhiko Tsugawa, Shuji Sano

Yasujiro Ozu’s frequent leading man Chishu Ryu is riveting as Shuhei, a widowed high school teacher who finds that the more he tries to do what is best for his son’s future, the more they are separated. Tho...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1947 • Japan
Starring Choko Iida, Hohi Aoki, Eitaro Ozawa

Yasujiro Ozu’s first post–World War II film takes place in an impoverished Tokyo neighborhood that has been partly destroyed in bombing raids. Here, a hard-hearted middle-aged widow (Choko Iida) reluctantly take...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1948 • Japan
Starring Kinuyo Tanaka, Shuji Sano, Chieko Murata

Perhaps Yasujiro Ozu’s darkest film, this devastating account of Japan’s wartime realities follows the struggles of Tokiko (Kinuyo Tanaka), a mother who is forced to turn to sex work in order to pay off her...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1949 • Japan
Starring Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara, Yumeji Tsukioka

One of the most powerful of Yasujiro Ozu’s family portraits, LATE SPRING (BANSHUN) tells the story of a widowed father who feels compelled to marry off his beloved only daughter. Eminent Ozu players Chishu...

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1950 • Japan
Starring Kinuyo Tanaka, Hideko Takamine, Ken Uehara

Japanese golden-age greats Kinuyo Tanaka and Hideko Takamine star in this rich melodrama centered on two sisters: the reserved, traditional Setsuko (Tanaka), unhappily married to an alcoholic wastrel, and...