Your Company
 

The Birth of Saké

✭ ✭ ✭   Read critic reviews

Japan, United States · 2015
1h 30m
Director Erik Shirai
Starring
Genre Documentary

In the harsh winter of North Japan, a small group of workers at the Yoshida Brewery carry on the 2,000-year-old art of making saké. This beautiful documentary gives viewers a unique glimpse of this process and of the dedication and sacrifice of the artisans who spend their lives creating saké.

Stream The Birth of Saké

What are people saying?

What are critics saying?

70

The New York Times by Daniel M. Gold

Mr. Shirai nicely shuffles in the back stories of several workers, and his shots of sky, sea and early morning landscapes could fit amid Hokusai woodcuts.

70

The Hollywood Reporter by John DeFore

Making good use of his camera-department experience on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations and elsewhere, Shirai seeks out the visual appeal of both the brewery's operation.

80

Variety by Justin Chang

A richly immersive documentary that plays like an elegy for a time-honored but slowly vanishing way of life.

60

Village Voice by Simon Abrams

[Shirai] indulges his subjects' lack of introspection and focuses on the ephemeral beauty of the brewery's centuries-old sake-making method.

Users who liked this film also liked