NHK international co-pro doc nominated for News and Documentary Emmy Awards

Japan’s public broadcaster NHK is proud to announce that one of our international  co-production documentaries “The Making of a Japanese”, co-produced with Cineric Creative was nominated  for the News and Documentary Emmy Awards in the Outstanding Politics and Government Documentary  Category. The film is directed by documentary filmmaker Ema Ryan Yamazaki and shot by NHK’s in-house 
cinematographer Kazuki Kakurai.  

'The Making of a Japanese” is a 99-minute feature-length documentary which paints an intimate portrait of childhood inside a Tokyo public school. Over the course of a year, 1st and 6th graders navigate daily routines and small dramas. 

NHK and Cineric Creative launched the co-production project “Elementary School Project” in 2021. The Oscar nominated short documentary “Instruments of a Beating Heart” and NHK's "No-Nare Special" also emerged from this project. 

The director Ema Ryan Yamazaki and cinematographer 

Kazuki Kakurai filmed for a year starting in the spring of 2021. They filmed a total of 700 hours of footage over  150 days at the school. The creative team seamlessly blended into the background as they succeed in filming  the natural behaviors of the children, while capturing the small details in the fabric of school life. As much as  this is a film about the children, it aims to convey the profound value of education, the growth of children, and  the struggles and conflicts faced by adults on the front line. 

The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony to be held on May 27th in New York.