Megumi Nishikura

In 1915 a young, charismatic Japanese man with a mysterious past entered into the Appalachian culture of Asheville, North Carolina, is suspicioned a spy, targeted by the Klan, but perseveres with a passion for photography and the mountains he adopts, bringing to life Great Smoky Mountains National Park & the Appalachian Trail.

A stop-motion film, written, animated, & directed by Dan Blank.

A journey into the intricacies of mixed-race Japanese and their multicultural experiences in modern day Japan. For some hafus, Japan is the only home they know, for some living in Japan is an entirely new experience, and the others are caught somewhere between two different worlds.

Two friends, connected by family histories on opposite sides of World War II, set out to explore the lasting trauma of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. While Japanese hibakusha endure lifelong health complications and psychological scars, American atomic veterans who witnessed the bombings' aftermath also struggle with radiation-related illnesses and PTSD.

In 2017, Japan-born Yuri Kondo was denied renewal of her Japanese passport under Nationality Law 11.1 after the Ministry of Justice suspected she had naturalized as a U.S. citizen. When COVID-19 began spreading globally and Japan’s borders started to close, Kondo chose to shelter in place with her family in Japan, overstaying her visa waiver on her U.S. passport. Now unable to leave Japan without risking re-entry denial, Kondo is fighting back by suing the Japanese government and joining a growing movement to challenge Japan’s outdated single-nationality law and redefine what it means to be Japanese in a globally connected world.