Film followed by dialogue with director Kana Tomoko.

A documentary filmmaker enters the evacuation zone after the Fukushima Daiichi power plant meltdown of March 2011, only to find out she is pregnant. After many years of fertility treatments, she feels a mixture of joy and devastation. She turns the camera on herself to examine what it means to be a first-time mother in an age of nuclear anxiety.

JAPANESE DOCUMENTARY NOW
A famous deaf composer, considered the Beethoven of modern Japan, who may be a fraud. A 93-year-old Japanese-American Zen monk who dreams of making a feature film. A documentary filmmaker inside the no-go zone at the Fukushimi nuclear meltdown who realizes she is pregnant.

The Japanese Program and the Department of Cinema Arts at the University of Iowa present Japanese Documentary Now, a program of three documentaries to be screened February 23-26 at FilmScene, located at 118 E College Street in downtown Iowa City.

Three of the most prominent documentary filmmakers working in Japan today will share their most recent works and engage with the audience in a Q&A following each screening. All screenings are free and open to the public thanks to generous funding by the Japan Foundation Institutional Project Support (IPS) Grant to the University of Iowa and the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies (CAPS) at the University of Iowa.