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You can stream The Most Beautiful (1944) on Criterion Channel with a subscription.

Young women at a precision optics factory in wartime Japan push to exceed production quotas, enduring illness, injury, and personal hardship to “serve the country.” Led by Tsuru Watanabe, they fight fatigue and setbacks to keep their line moving—even when duty collides with grief.

Inside a precision optics factory, the relentless grind of wartime production turns young women into tireless cogs in the national machine. You will feel the crushing weight of their exhaustion as personal grief clashes with the brutal demands of meeting impossible quotas.