Robert A. Nakamura and Tadashi Nakamura appear in Third Act by Tadashi Nakamura, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. | Photo by Tadashi Nakamura. Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Third Act Review: Processing a Life on Film

Sundance 2025

/
6 mins read

Third Act
(United States, 93 min.)
Dir. Tadashi Nakamura
Program: U.S. Documentary Competition

 

“I knew I had to make a film about my dad,” declares filmmaker Tadashi Nakamura at the beginning of his latest documentary Third Act. The son of famed director Robert A. Nakamura, a man considered by many to be “the godfather of Asian American media,” it is easy to why Nakamura would want his father’s legacy immortalized.

A pioneering filmmaker, educator, and activist, Robert used film as both an act of resistance and a tool for fostering community. His debut feature Hito Hata: Raise the Banner (1980), which he co-directed with Duane Kubo, was one of the first films produced by and about Asian Americans. Leaving an undeniable mark on cinema, his 1972 documentary short Manzanar, about his family’s time in the infamous American concentration camp during World War II, was inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2022. His significance was felt away from the camera as well.

Using his sense of activism as the building blocks for a house of creativity, Robert advocated for representation in the arts by co-founding Visual Communications, a non-profit organization designed to promote and support works by Asian American filmmakers. Always trying to find ways to use media to best serve the people, Robert understood the power it had to uplift and push communities forward.

Taking the necessary steps forward can be daunting when one is dragging the heavy baggage of the past with them. This point is made heart-wrenchingly clear in Third Act when Robert is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease during filming. Third Act may have started off as a loving tribute a cinematic force, but it evolves into a richly layered examination of the generational effects of segregation, grief, parenthood, and art’s ability to help us make sense of it all.

As the finality of life, which once felt so far away, moves increasingly nearer, Robert’s introspection on his life and works reveal some hard truths that even shocks his son.  Discovering for the first time that his father has had a longstanding battle with depression, Nakamura is forced to recontextualize the man who he views as a hero and the inspiration for his own cinematic endeavours.

In observing Robert’s journey to reconcile with his past, Third Act peels back the layers of historical injustice that 12,000 Japanese Americans endured when they were uprooted and placed in camps like Manzanar. Forced to rebuild from the ground up, the concentration camp remained a haunting presence in the famed director’s work and mind. The latter of which manifested into a form of internalized self-loathing that was further fuelled by the anti-Japanese racism prevalent in post-war America.

Touching briefly on the pressure to wear the ill-fitting suit of white society, Nakamura’s film shows how racism can spark insecurities that span generations.  While Robert may have longed for a life that was not afforded to Japanese Americans when he was a kid, Third Act emphasizes the stabilizing role community can provide in times of hardships and self-doubt.

The importance of building a strong support network applies to the family unit as well. As the audience observes Robert’s health declining over time, the family’s annual excursions to Hawaii become that much more important. As the documentary shows, there are various levels of grief that come with illness, but not all of it must be tackled alone or all at once. Nakamura’s mother Karen, who is also Robert’s longtime producer, puts it best early in the film when she states, “All of us are in for a lot of grief…I’m not going there before it happens.”

In watching Nakamura wrestle with his own grief regarding his father’s health, Third Act highlights the challenges of being in the “sandwich generation”—that stage in life when you must deal with aging parents while learning how to be a parent yourself.  The tug-of-war of emotions that come with this challenge is perfectly encapsulated when Nakamura and Robert attend a retrospective of the latter’s work. It is hard not to be moved by the way that Tadashi, with his own young son sitting in the audience, attempts to keep it together at the Q&A when observing in real time Robert’s inability to answer some questions coherently.

Crafting a moving portrait of his father’s life and works that moves beyond the superficial, Nakamura both celebrates an icon while simultaneously challenging the audience to reflect on the general impact of racism and illness. Third Act shows that even when navigating these hardships that life can throw at people, one can always rely on film to help us process it all.

Third Act premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Courtney Small is a Rotten Tomatoes approved film critic and co-host of the radio show Frameline. He has contributed to That Shelf, Leonard Maltin, Cinema Axis, In the Seats, and Black Girl Nerds. He is the host of the Changing Reels podcast and is a member of the Toronto Film Critics Association, Online Film Critics Society and the African American Film Critics Association.

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