A salaryman faces a major life change as his firm undergoes financial difficulties. To add to his troubles, a man claiming to be his long-estranged father shows up at his house requesting shelter. One of the best of Somai's seriocomic studies of the messiness of family life.
A mysterious street-painter, Jouji, wanders aimlessly, homeless. Together with his homeless pals, he makes his living by selling his paintings on the street. His paintings, dynamically exploding on pieces of cardboard, catch the eyes of Kyoko, an art dealer. He can feel alive only if he keeps...
Aggie is suffering a great pain after the death of her Grandmother. She has no one else so she moves in with her Godmother and her son, Louie. Aggie does not speak a single word, the pain she is going through is unimaginable, and this portrayal is simply stunning in its sadness and grief. Louie and...
During a suicide attack on an airport, the hand grenade of 'M', one of three terrorists, malfunctions, leaving him captured. Exposed to maltreatment in prison, he slowly loses his grip on reality as he is forced to confront his ideological convictions.
Tarō is a vagabond, a wannabe, an urchin, and not what anyone would call mainstream. He does not care. Do not even ask him about his background or age. He would not know and he would not bother. The man meets two others and he begins to experience a new set of conditions.
This new version of Nagasaki's Yami utsu shinzô (1982) is neither a remake nor a sequel. It is both those things, and at the same time it is also a documentary, a portrait of the consequences of passing time, and an occasionally very funny reflection on what the hell the point is of all this...
Takuji Kameoka is a 37-year-old bachelor whose occupation is a “miscellaneous actor”. His only interest is drinking. One day he falls in love and his boring life begins to change. The film is based on the book “Actor, Takuji Kameoka” by Akito Inui, a five-time nominee for Japan’s most...
Based on the semibiographical novel by Jun Miura, Oh My Buddha is the classic summer coming-of-age story that is burned to a crisp with teenage angst, youthful dreams and that warm sense of folk zeitgeist of the 70s. The narrator is a first-year student at an all-boys Buddhist school. Jaded by his...
Former punk rocker Jonen, now a Buddhist priest, seems to have lost the meaning of his life. His manic depression handicaps him further. Music seems to be the only solution for him to exorcise his demons, against all obstacles and sound volume controllers.
In 2010, while covering the issue of the "secret agreement" at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the author came across diplomatic documents relating to the reversion of Okinawa and was particularly impressed by the handwritten documents of Kazuo Chiba, then Director of the North American First...
In 1970s Onomichi, Akira invites his crush Yoshioka to spend summer break at his home. But when Yoshioka falls for Meeko, tension brews beneath the heat.
Set in Nagano Prefecture, the movie stars Shingo Mizusawa (8000 Miles) as an awkward 28-year-old temporary factory worker named Kaji; a character partially modeled after the perpetrator of the 2008 Akihabara massacre. His social interactions are limited to his postings on internet message boards...
A man and a woman meet the day before the 15th anniversary of the Great Hanshin earthquake. Both experienced the quake as a child but left soon after the quake. During the course of the long night walk, their life after the quake and the complex relationship to the city of Kobe gradually surface.
Koshiro Matsudaira lives in Tanjousan Bun in Echigo as a commoner and surrounded by people that love him, including his father Sakubei, who works for the Tanjousan Bun. One day, many officials working for Tanjousan Bun come to Koshiro's house and Sakubei tells his son the shocking truth about his...
