Akio Fujimoto's "Passage of Life," a drama about the struggles of a Myanmar family in Japan and the troubled return of a mother and her children to Yangon, premiered at last year's Tokyo International Film Festival before continuing on to win honors and acclaim at more than a dozen festivals around the world.
His success was years in the making. Using mostly nonprofessional actors, Fujimoto shot the film in 2014 and only completed post-production in April 2017.
With its true-to-life drama about the migrant experience in Japan, "Passage of Life" was also a hard sell to local distributors who tend to prefer Japanese films set in exotic locales only if a domestic star is at the center. Luckily for Fujimoto, the film's production company, E.x.N., took over distribution.