The story centers on a man who loves movies, having once worked at movie studio in pursuit of his dreams, surrounded by great directors and famous actors. In this tale…
The only movie theater on the Onomichi seafront is about to close its doors. Its last night of screenings will be an all-night marathon of Japanese war films. When lightning…
Several years after Shuzo settled his wife’s birthday-surprise divorce proposal (What a Wonderful Family, 40th), the Hirata family faces new problems. Ignoring his family’s worry that he is too old…
Nobuko (Sayuri Yoshinaga) works in Nagasaki, Japan as a midwife. Her son died 3 years earlier from the atomic bomb. On August 9, 1948, her son appears in front of…
Ginko’s younger brother Tetsuro, a failed comedian, is the oddball of the family. Embarrassing, loud and plain inappropriate at times causes Ginko to disown him. The two reunite when she…
Kanno is a Yakuza. He had to kill Matsuoka who betrayed their boss. Kanno knew Matsuoka had a 3-year-old daughter named Youko. Before he gave himself to the police, he…
In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant…
Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of…
A widow who has single-handedly raised her autistic son loses her job and begins attending a technical college to gain new qualifications. She meets others looking for a new start…
Also known as: For My Daughter’s 7th Birthday. Many years following her mother’s suicide, Maya seeks out her father, who deserted them, for revenge. All intertwined with the investigation of…
A railway stationmaster at a dying end-of-the-line village in Hokkaido is haunted by memories of his dead wife and daughter. When the railroad line is scheduled to be closed, he…
When a fugitive begins a romance with the woman hiding him from the law, it becomes uncertain whether he will ever escape the shadow of his heinous crimes–or the detectives…
Joji Kano is a loose cannon cop from backwoods Okinawa, sent to Tokyo to investigate the grizzly murder of an Okinawa woman. As he probes deeper into the sleazy world…
Yukio is an ex-farmer working as a dump-truck driver in Kashima. Haunted by the drowning of his two young sons, whose names he has had tattooed on his back in…
Lonely and love-stricken high-school student Hiroki pursues a girl, but another one mysteriously appears in his life. Is she a figment of his psyche, or is she real?
A police investigator cracks down on yakuza business, but once he realizes the police are in negotiations with certain factions, he sides with his own syndicate of choice.