Born in America, filmmaker Ian Thomas Ash holds an MA in Film and Television Production from the University of Bristol, UK. Beginning with his first feature documentary, the ballad of vicki and jake (2006), his films have focused on issues surrounding health and medicine and include two feature documentaries about children living in areas of Fukushima contaminated by the 2011 nuclear meltdown, In the Grey Zone (2012) and A2-B-C (2013). His recent work has focused on death and dying in Japan and includes -1287 (2014) and Sending Off (2019).