Documentary filmmaker Shizu Azuma wants to send a message through her latest film, "Utsukushii Hito": Just as we should never forget those who lost their lives in the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we should not forget those who survived, either.

Completed last year, the 116-minute film, known as "Beauty Within" in English, shows the lives of not only a Japanese survivor, but also Koreans and former Dutch captives of the Imperial Japanese Army, now leading peaceful lives back in their home countries.

Azuma, 39, said she wanted to focus not on the devastation of the war — which a lot of films about the bombings have done — but on the "beauty" of the people who outlived the calamities of the war. This is why she titled the film "Beauty Within," she said.