Hiroyuki Mihara

A group of war orphans initially seen scratching out an existence through black market work, as they are taken under the wing of a nameless soldier, just repatriated after the war.

The final film in the Beehive trilogy, Children of the Great Buddha chronicles war orphans working as tour guides among the looming statues and temples of Japan’s ancient capital of Nara. Shimizu’s uncharacteristic hands-on approach to the film’s cinematography frames the sacred objects as “very real agents” in the children’s threadbare lives, resulting in a deeply moving and spiritual work that fittingly concludes his orphan saga.