Biography
Ema Ryan Yamazaki is a Japanese-British documentary filmmaker and editor. Born in 1989 in Kobe, Japan, she grew up near Osaka and studied documentary filmmaking and editing at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. After graduating, she worked as an assistant editor to Sam Pollard.
She has directed feature documentaries including Monkey Business: The Adventures of Curious George's Creators (2017), Koshien: Japan's Field of Dreams (2019) and The Making of a Japanese (2023). As an editor, her credits include Black Box Diaries (2024) and American Doctor (2026). Her short film Instruments of a Beating Heart (2024) received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Short Film.
Yamazaki is married to producer Eric Nyari and is based in Tokyo. She has also edited earlier projects such as CNN’s Chicagoland (2014) and HBO’s Class Divide (2015).
