After three years abroad, filmmaker Toichi Nakata returns home to Osaka and turns his camera on his family, exposing all its visible schisms and hidden fault-lines.

The Nakatas are a family of conflicting Korean and Japanese cultures. Toichi's father, a Korean immigrant, cannot reconcile his Korean and his wife's Japanese families. Toichi's mother is preoccupied with her present and future position, his brother is torn between the family business empire and a cult religious sect, and his sister has opted out of the scenario altogether to go her own way.

Tolstoy may have been correct in his assessment that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, but the problems of the Nakata family seem universal. The filmmaker himself is not exempt. Should he return to Japan and fulfill the traditional role of an eldest son? Or should he come out to his family with his homosexuality and choose his own way forward?

"Beautifully made... Toichi Nakata's film of his family is both unsparing and humane... This film is highly recommended."—James McShane, EMIE Bulletin

"Fragile though startlingly direct... Dense and moving, OSAKA STORY frames personal desire within cultural constraints."—Amy Taubin, Sight and Sound

"The film is very personal in content, and is most appropriate for academic library collections. OSAKA STORY has the potential to be utilized by several academic areas, including family studies, sociology, psychology, Asian studies, and film studies."—Rue Herbert, MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Librarianship

"Deeply moving... an unflinching look at the disintegrating marriage of his Japanese mother and Korean father, and the culture clash it involves. Nakata's film has rightly been compared with Shohei Imamura's feature movies."—Philip French, The Observer (London)

"Critics' Choice!... Engrossing... Apart from the fact that the surprisingly frank revelations that unfurl regarding Nakata's family are interesting in themselves, what makes his film so compelling is the tension between the fraught emotions at work and the traditional Japanese reserve used to express them... The film sheds light on the relationships between Japanese husbands and wives, parents and children, and Japanese and Koreans, but its concerns and appeal are universal... Fascinating."—Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London)