Megumi Nishikura, a young documentary filmmaker in Tokyo, consolidates her goals under one main theme: "I want to remind us of our common humanity, to remember that we are all humans with the same hopes and desires and we all deserve to be respected.
"All of our global issues — whether it's environmental, war, poverty — stem from the same root cause. We feel that we are separate and disconnected from each other. The reason we have environmental problems, for example, is that we humans feel we are separate from nature, so we continue with unsustainable development over preserving our biodiversity. Whether it is on a person-to-person level or nation to nation, I want to make films that remind us of our interconnectedness."
Nishikura's beliefs are tied to her international upbringing, an upbringing that gave her connections throughout Asia and America. Her Japanese father, working in Tokyo for Kyodo News when she was born in 1980, moved the family often in his role as foreign correspondent, and her American mother brought the family along.