The title is the name Japan gave him: the Bodhidharma of modern times. Around 500 CE, Bodhidharma carried Zen from India into China. Fifteen centuries later a Japanese layman turned monk carried it into Europe, and this film, assembled from the audiovisual archives of the Association Zen Internationale, tells that story in about thirty minutes.
It begins where Deshimaru's own account always began, at Kodo Sawaki's deathbed. Sawaki had refused for decades to ordain him, wanting him to keep practising inside ordinary working life rather than become a professional temple monk. Only shortly before his death did he ordain him, and with an instruction rather than a blessing: Zen in Japan had grown too institutional, and the living practice needed fresh soil. Deshimaru was invited to Europe soon afterwards and stayed fifteen years, teaching shikantaza, just sitting, until his death in 1982.
The film interleaves archive footage with interview passages in which a European questioner asks him directly whether the spirit of Zen is declining in Japan, and whether it can take root in France the way a seed takes in new ground. Deshimaru's answers circle around the themes that defined his teaching: following the cosmic order rather than personal preference; correct concentration and correct posture; the making of strong people rather than comfortable ones; the difference between an inherited god and what he calls the natural god; life and death as one question rather than two. Passages of Japanese waka are read over the images, and much of the film carries the unhurried rhythm of an archive assembled by people who knew him.
One sequence stands out for anyone who pictures Deshimaru only as a severe figure. He describes visiting French kindergartens, arriving with chocolate, which delighted everyone, and then gradually talking about zazen until the children were crossing their legs. He walks through what he told them: chin drawn in, this part stretched, the back really extended rather than slumped, legs properly folded, knees down if they can manage it, and even a short sit done wholeheartedly. In the end, he says, the French children came to like zazen more than chocolate. Too much chocolate makes the head dull; sitting makes it sharp, and the children who sat did better at school. The fingers affect the head, he explains, holding them one way changes the expression, holding them another way settles you. Then comes the other half of the teaching, which is the same teaching: when it is time to play, play wholeheartedly, and don't sit there thinking about chocolate while you play.
For viewers who come to Deshimaru through his books, this film supplies the biographical spine those books assume. It explains why a man in his fifties left a career, a country and a familiar language to sit down in Paris with whoever walked through the door, and why the people who sat with him still describe those fifteen years as a transplant rather than a visit.