Third Act

Official Selection, 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Opening Film, 2025 CAAMFest
Official Selection, 2025 BlackStar Film Festival

Tad Nakamura always knew he’d make a film about his father. As Parkinson’s takes hold, both men enter the frame and become the story. This time, Tad can’t hide behind the lens. His voice catches as he asks questions he’s never asked. Robert Nakamura, who once commanded sets as the “godfather of Asian American film,” now needs help with simple tasks—yet his timing remains sharp, sliding halfway into frame on the stairlift before easing back. We see him sorting negatives, deciding what to digitize. His wife Karen becomes caregiver. Home movies mix with hospital visits. Every holiday becomes a production shoot. In Hawai’i, Robert contemplates his ashes: “I was thinking the ocean… or Manzanar.”

For Tad—two weeks old on the set of Hito Hata (1980), once choosing touchdowns over film history—the camera uncovers what Robert kept buried: depression, self-hatred, wanting to be let off at the corner, ashamed of his gardener father. At Manzanar, three generations stand among the remains: Robert teaching grandson Prince about the camps while Tad films, capturing how stories pass between bodies—in the tremor of a hand, the lean toward listening. “Less history, more soul,” Robert says.

A filmmaker filming a filmmaker at the end—where any take might be the last.

—Anthony Yooshin Kim

FREE post-screening reception 8:30-9:30 PM for All-Fest Pass, THIRD ACT ticketholders, and AARP Members.