Masako Tsumura

Masako TSUMURA (Japan) is an editor, producer and filmmaker. She studied Media at Keio University in Japan, and moved to New York City in 1998, where she earned an MA in Media Studies from the New School University. She has worked as a local producer for major Japanese TV networks, including Fuji TV, TV Tokyo, and NHK. In 2003, she founded Imakoko Media, a film production company based in Tokyo and New York. She edited the award-winning documentary Arakimentari in 2004, for which she won the Best Editing Award at the Honolulu International Film Festival. In 2008, she directed and produced Fire Under the Snow, a feature documentary about the Venerable Palden Gyatso, a Tibetan monk who survived 33 years of imprisonment and torture under the Chinese occupation in Tibet. The film premiered at Tribeca Film Festival in 2008 and won the Special Jury Mention at Miradas Film Festival in 2009. After running a successful festival circuit around the world, it launched a theatrical distribution in New York, Los Angeles, and Tokyo. In 2015, she produced The Birth of Saké, directed by Erik Shirai, which won multiple awards. She co-directed Nowhere to go but everywhere, her second collaboration with Erik Shirai, world premiere at IFFR 2022, centering on the grieving process of a man who learns how to dive after losing his wife in the 2011 tsunami in Japan.