The late Shindo Kaneto worked on several Mizoguchi films, as everything from assistant art director to co-writer, and this documentary (shot over two years) recounts the master’s life and career across some 36 interviews with actors, producers and crew members from the films. It describes the trajectory of Mizoguchi’s long career clearly and accurately, and provides a lot of anecdotal testimony about his aims and working methods. It also explores the various locales where Mizoguchi worked and gives a useful sense of what else was happening in the film industry at the time. The left-leaning Shindo was one of the first directors in Japan to start his own production company and several of his films (Children of Hiroshima, 1952; The Island, 1960; Onibaba, 1964) reached international distribution. His tabloid-journalist instincts are sometimes intrusive here, but the film as a whole is valuable as a source of first-hand information.