

There Was a Father
1942-04-01 · 93 min · ★ 7.0
Shuhei Horikawa, a poor schoolteacher, struggles to raise his son Ryohei by himself, despite neither money nor prospects.
Trailers are previews, not full movies.
No authorized playback source configured. Use the legal watch options below.
Production details
- Directors
- Yasujirō Ozu
- Production companies
- Shochiku
- Countries
- Japan
- Status
- Released
Top Cast
Chishū RyūShuhei Horikawa
Shūji SanoRyohei Horikawa
Shin SaburiYasutaro Kurokawa
Takeshi SakamotoMakoto Hirata
Mitsuko MitoFumi
Shinichi HimoriMinoru Uchida
Seiji NishimuraPriest
Reikō TaniTeacher of Chinese Literature
Kanji KawaraTeacher of Junior High School
Kenichi MiyajimaCompany Employee
Chiyoko FumiyaMaid
Shin'yō NaraDoctor
Kenji OyamaGraduate
Kōji MitsuiGraduate
Shoichi KofujitaTohoku Industrial StudentTitle information and images are supplied by TMDb. Explore our discovery guide for advice on comparing metadata and legal viewing options.
Where to watch
Availability provided by JustWatch via TMDb. Offers can change. Provider links are listed on TMDb; full playback requires a separately authorized source.
Streaming
HBO Max Amazon Channel, HBO Max
With ads
Plex, Plex Channel
View authorized watch options on TMDbSeasons & episodes
Recommendations

After months of living a solitary existence, Lenny, 34, picks up his kids from school. Every year he spends a couple of weeks with his sons Sage, 9, and Frey, 7. Lenny hosts his kids within a midtown studio apartment in New York. During these two weeks, he must figure out if he wants to act as their father or be their friend. Ultimately, their trip upstate results in complete lawlessness taking over their lives.

A struggling salesman takes custody of his son as he's poised to begin a life-changing professional career.

Willy Loman, an aging, failing salesman, struggles to accept reality and his failure to achieve the American Dream.

A man living in the towering shadow of his aging father finds it difficult to start a new chapter in his life by marrying his girlfriend and moving to California.

A determined father risks everything to rescue a dedicated teacher and her students from a raging wildfire.

Two separate stories mesh - in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir.

After reuniting with his mother in Ho Chi Minh City, a family tragedy causes Binh to flee from Viet Nam to America. Landing in New York, Binh begins a road trip to Texas, where his American father is said to live.

During the 1976 Soweto uprising, a white school teacher's life and values are threatened when he asks questions about the death of a young black boy who died in police custody.

A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.

When a son and mother move to Seattle in hopes for a better life, the mother meets a seemingly polite man. Things go south when the man turns out to be abusive, endangering their lives. As the mother struggles to maintain hope in an impossible situation, the son has plans to escape.

Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.

Following the death of his wife, a young father's hold on reality crumbles, and a strange presence begins to stalk him from the shadowy recesses of the apartment he shares with his two young sons.

Takumi and his daughter Hana live in Mizubiki Village, close to Tokyo. One day, the village inhabitants become aware of a plan to build a camping site near Takumi's house offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to nature.

A Midwestern husband and father announces his plan to have a sex change operation.

Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.

Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman driven by money. He learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must make a life-changing decision and choose his true son or the boy he raised as his own.

A man is released from prison after 15 years. He reunites with his high school girlfriend, now a single mother of three. What follows is a lyrical take on love, regret and second chances.

After her stay-at-home husband leaves her, a workaholic lawyer finds that she is not completely up to the tasks of caring for her young son, ailing father and household all by herself.

A young boy travels across Australia with his father, who's wanted by the law.

Years after a pandemic wipes out most of the female population, a father struggles to shield his daughter from a dangerous and predatory world.
Similar titles

At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.

County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.

17-year-old Asher is split between his charismatic teacher and his brash father, who wants him to take over his scaffolding business.

Hamid is an Iranian teenage boy whose sexuality brings him into conflict with his family's Muslim beliefs.

Josef Bertholt is head of operations of the Munich Police's drug squad. When his wife Lily is the victim of a hit by drug dealers, he becomes even more obsessed with his work.

In early 20th-century Montana, Col. William Ludlow lives on a ranch in the wilderness with his sons, Alfred, Tristan, and Samuel. Eventually, the unconventional but close-knit family are bound by loyalty, tested by war, and torn apart by love, as told over the course of several decades in this epic saga.

The story of Usnavi, a bodega owner who has mixed feelings about closing his store and retiring to the Dominican Republic or staying in Washington Heights.

Takada, a Japanese fisherman has been estranged from his son for many years, but when the son is diagnosed with terminal cancer his daughter-in-law, Rie, summons him to the hospital. Through a series of obstacles and relationships, he is brought unexpectedly closer to both an understanding of himself and of his son.

Having moved to Paris for university, Leevi returns to his native Finland for the summer to help his estranged father renovate the family lake house so it can be sold. Tareq, a recent asylum seeker from Syria, has been hired to help with the work, and when Leevi's father has to return to town on business, the two young men establish a connection and embark on a romance set against the idyllic Finnish summer. However, looming over this chance encounter, is the father's imminent return to the lake house, the continuation of Leevi's studies abroad as well as Tareq's complex relationship with his family in Syria.

Nora is worried because she’s performing in a play at her school, but being bullied by her classmates make her face something much more important: being accepted by her dad. The following 17 minutes will change their relationship forever.

A poor construction worker, who struggles to keep his son in private school, mistakes an orb he finds in a junkjard for a toy which proves to be much, much more once the young boy starts to play with it.

Brad Whitewood Jr. lives in rural Pennsylvania and has few prospects. Against his mother's wishes, he seeks out his estranged father, the head of a gang of thieves in a nearby town. Though his new girlfriend supports his criminal ambitions, Brad Jr. soon learns that his father is a dangerous man.

In the racially divided town of Anderson, South Carolina in 1976, football coach Harold Jones spots a mentally disabled African-American young man nicknamed Radio near his practice field and is inspired to befriend him. Soon, Radio is Jones' loyal assistant, and he becomes a student at T.L. Hanna High School. But things start to sour when Coach Jones begins taking guff from parents and fans who feel that his devotion to Radio is getting in the way of the team's quest for a championship.

The story of Ace Eli Walford, a 1920s stunt flyer who barnstorms around the country, taking his eleven-year-old son Rodger with him as he goes from town to town. The place is rural Kansas, and the time is midsummer in the early nineteen-twenties, not long after World War I. Eli (Cliff Robertson), a barn storming pilot who has the emotional make-up of an 11-year-old, and Rodger (Eric Shea), his 11-year-old son who possesses the wisdom of the ancients, set off to see the world, which means flying all the way to San Willow. To Eli, San Willow seems to be as fabled as Xanadu and quite as remote. In essence, "Ace Eli and Rodger of the Skies" is about the adventures of Rodger and Eli getting from nowhere to nowhere. Eli, a killer with the ladies at first, always leaves them unsatisfied. He seems to have a sex problem. Rodger spends a lot of his time getting his dad out of scrapes. He also drinks, smokes and goes to sleep at night crying for his deceased mom.

A tough, Jewish ex-con just released from prison crosses a powerful drug dealer and former prison rival in his return to a life of crime.

In 1976, a teenage girl struggles to cope while living with her neurotic lower-middle-class family of nomads on the outskirts of Beverly Hills.

Determined to have a normal family life once his mother gets out of prison, a Scottish teenager from a tough background sets out to raise the money for a home.

A struggling salesman takes custody of his son as he's poised to begin a life-changing professional career.

Leopoldo returns to his hometown motivated by the woman he was in love with 25 years ago. Simultaneously, Esteban, his teenage son, travels to the beach with his high school classmates, where he will strive to fit into a group that is hostile to him. Both must confront themselves to achieve what they believe will make them happy.

In 1965, passionate musician Glenn Holland takes a day job as a high school music teacher, convinced it's just a small obstacle on the road to his true calling: writing a historic opus. As the decades roll by with the composition unwritten but generations of students inspired through his teaching, Holland must redefine his life's purpose.