Born in America, Ian Thomas Ash earned an MA in Film and Television Production at the University of Bristol, UK, in 2005. His first feature documentary, ‘the ballad of vicki and jake’ (2006), received the Prix du Canton Vaud prize at the 2006 Visions du Reél International Documentary Film Festival in Nyon, Switzerland.
Ian’s two feature documentaries about children living in areas of Fukushima contaminated by the 2011 nuclear meltdown, ‘In the Grey Zone‘(2012) and ‘A2-B-C‘(2013), have been screened at festivals around the world where they have also received multiple awards.
The World Premier of ‘-1287‘(2014), Ian’s latest documentary, took place in the 2014 Raindance Film Festival in London. Ian has lived in Japan for a total of 12 years and lives in Tokyo. He is currently in production for two feature documentaries, one about a little told niche in the Japanese sex industry and the other the third installment in his series about Fukushima.
Eighteen months after the nuclear meltdown, children in Fukushima are suffering from severe nose bleeds and are developing skin rashes and thyroid cysts. Citing a lack of transparency in the official medical testing of their children and the ineffectiveness of the decontamination of their homes and schools, the children’s mothers take radiation monitoring into their own hands.
During deeply intimate conversations with the filmmaker after she learns she is going to die, Kazuko challenges cultural and social norms speaking candidly about her own life and death while she grapples with what it means to be honest and live happily. As she nears the end of her life, through observations about love, money, marriage and death, Kazuko develops…