Movies: Ian Thomas Ash

Through animation and a series of interviews with nine young men in Tokyo's gay district, this documentary exposes and humanizes the rarely seen world of gay sex work in Japan....

The Ushiku immigration center near Tokyo mainly holds people seeking refuge in Japan. Using a hidden camera, award-winning filmmaker Thomas Ash interviewed inmates there from late 2019. His film publicly accuses Japan’s uncompromising refugee policy ...

Eighteen months after the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima, children who were not evacuated are found to have thyroid cysts and nodules. What will this mean for their future?...

SENDING OFF follows the patients of Dr. Kaoru KONTA and her team of nurses as they provide hospice care to patients in their homes in rural Japan. A special focus is directed at the deepening relationships the patients form with their families as the...

A young man speaks of the abuse he suffered at the hands of his priest and its lasting effects....

During deeply intimate conversations with the filmmaker after she learns she is going to die, Kazuko challenges cultural and social norms speaking candidly about her own life and death while she grapples with what it means to be honest and live happi...

The story of Vicki, a single mother struggling with addiction, and her young son, Jake. The film opens as Vicki and Jake are beginning a new chapter in their lives, moving from a homeless shelter into their own council house. But however hard Vicki t...