Father and daughter filmmaking team, Bhawin and Maya Suchak, are raising funds to complete, A Walk For Every Season, their feature length documentary film about Jun San Yasuda, longtime Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist nun from the Grafton Peace Pagoda. This is project with so many personal connections, one that grows out of a relationship that has shaped the filmmakers lives for more than 22 years.

When Bhawin was a teacher at The Albany Free School, he regularly brought students to visit Jun San at the Grafton Peace Pagoda in upstate New York. Those visits were deeply formative for him and over time, Jun San became a mentor, spiritual advisor, respected elder, and powerful example of what it means to dedicate your life to peace, compassion, and justice.

Maya has known Jun San for essentially her entire life. As she grew up, Maya and her family participated in countless peace walks, attended annual Flower Festivals to honor the Buddha’s birthday, prayed at Hiroshima Day memorials, and even temple sat at the Pagoda in Grafton when Jun San was traveling. Now decades after they first connected with her, Maya and Bhawin are collaborating to tell Jun San’s story.

About the Film

A Walk For Every Season is a feature documentary about Jun San Yasuda, a Japanese Buddhist nun who has spent more than five decades walking for peace. Her extraordinary life of activism has connected movements for nuclear abolition, Indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, and nonviolence.

Through intimate verite footage, archival materials, interviews, and journeys across the United States and around the world, the film follows Jun San’s life of walking, prayer, and activism while asking a larger question: "What does it mean to remain committed to peace over the course of an entire lifetime—even when the world around you continues to be shaped by violence and injustice?"

Maya and Bhawin are co-directors, co-cinematographers and co-editors of the film, and have been engaged in a deeply collaborative process from the beginning of the project. They have traveled and filmed together, documenting Jun San’s daily life, the peace walks, ceremonies, relationship-building, organizing and activism. As cinematographers on the project, they have co-created the distinct visual language of the documentary, and we will be editing the film together as they move into post-production.

Why We’re Asking for Your Support

For the past three years, A Walk For Every Season has been a labor of love. Bhawin and Maya have self-funded the film while traveling, filming, gathering archival materials, and building the story. They are now nearing the completion of principal photography and preparing for the intensive work of editing and finishing the film.

Funds raised through this campaign will directly support the completion of the documentary, including:

Editing and post-production

Professional sound mix

Color correction and color grading

Music licensing and rights

Archival footage and photography

Captions, accessibility, and final delivery

Independent documentaries—especially films centered on peace, social justice, Indigenous solidarity, and grassroots activism—can be incredibly difficult to finance. Bhawin and Maya have taken this project as far as they can on our own, and are now turning to their community for help bringing it across the finish line.

Jun San has spent more than 50 years walking, praying, organizing, and standing alongside communities struggling for peace and justice. This is an inspiring, powerful and important story that deserves to be preserved and shared with as wide an audience as possible. If this film and Jun San’s work speak to you, please consider making a contribution at any level. If you aren’t able to donate, sharing this campaign with friends, family, and your community would mean just as much.

Your support will help Maya and Bhawin complete A Walk For Every Season and bring Jun San’s remarkable story—and the spirit of the Grafton Peace Pagoda—to audiences around the world.