Floating Clouds

Floating Clouds (浮雲, Ukigumo) is a 1955 Japanese drama film directed by Mikio Naruse. It is based on a novel with the same name by Japanese author and poet Fumiko Hayashi, written just before she died in 1951. The novel is set after World War II and contains the common post-war theme of wandering; the female main character struggles to find where she belongs in post-war Japan, and ends up floating endlessly about. The film is Naruse's most popular film in Japan. It was voted the second best Japanese film of all time in a poll of 140 Japanese critics and filmmakers conducted by the magazine Kinema Junpo in 1999.