It’s 1940, and the population of Japan is divided over its entry into World War II. Satoko, the wife of a fabric merchant, is devoted to her husband but is beginning to suspect he’s up to something. Soon she allows herself to be drawn into a game in which she enigmatically conceals her...
Four women in their thirties reevaluate their relationships, both shared and private, after a startling revelation concerning one's marriage forces each of them to ask one of life's biggest questions: "Am I who I want to be?"
Mizuki's husband Yusuke has been missing for three years. He suddenly comes back home as a ghost and asks Mizuki to go on a trip with him. Their trip consists of visiting the people that helped Yusuke on his previous travel.
Yuzo and Mitsuki live together in Yuzo's small apartment, their constant companionship tender and indifferent in turn. Then Yuzo receives a call from Satsuki, a documentarian resolved to make a film about a now-distant family tragedy, and the three meet, to search for some way to account for their...
After his parents die, a teenager goes to live with his older brother. As his loneliness grows, he becomes engrossed in practicing modern dance with his classmate.
Hamaguchi wrote and directed this film as a graduation project for the students at ENBU Seminar (film and theater school in Tokyo) when he taught there. It is a three-part film: The first part is a documentary-style production of a play; Then the actual full stage production of the play; and the...
One of Japan's most inspirational documentaries of 2018 "Life Goes On..." True stories of ordinary people struggling to rebuild their lives after the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011. Courage and compassion in the face of adversity. Six years after East Japan's Great Earthquake &...
A maiden work by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, and the origin to his later masterpieces “Passion” (2008), the 255 minute long “Intimacies” (2012), and the 317 minute long “Happy Hour” (2015). The unusual, usual life and the ever wandering souls of 5 young men and women, captured on 8mm film.
A man and a woman share the same time and same space. One day in the morning, they go their separate ways. The woman meets her old friend, but she looks annoyed. The man also meets his old friend again, but his thoughts are somewhere else.
Some youths interact at a bar, a horse race and a bowling alley. A girl who has been visiting from out of town ,on her train ride back, reads aloud a list of vocabulary definitions from a dictionary.
Like a noise rock Brave New World with echoes of Alphaville, this gorgeous black and white vision of Japan after a nuclear disaster pits chaos against control and secret agents against an oppressive government agency.
