Today is the 99th birthday of venerable Japanese film maker Kaneto Shindo. It’s also the day that his 1952 “Children of Hiroshima” finally receives its American theatrical release.
The black-and-white stunner stars the director’s late wife and muse, Nobuko Otowa, as a kindergarten teacher who returns to her hometown, Hiroshima, for the first time since the US nuked it.
She visits old friends and former students, many of whom suffer from the aftereffects of the bombing seven years earlier.
In the most haunting scenes, she recalls the final minutes before the bomb hit at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945.
With Japan facing a new nuclear crisis, this beautifully composed and acted heart-wrencher — which heralds an 11-film Shindo retrospective at BAM Rose Cinemas — couldn’t be more timely.