Children of the Great Buddha / 1952

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.