Nobuhiro Suwa

Tetsuro is living with his young girlfriend Aki in a pleasant house in Tokyo. They both spend a lot of time at their jobs. However their routine is upset when Tetsuro brings his 8-year-old son Shun to live with them, while his ex-wife recovers from a car accident.

Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to choose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.

Japan, 1944. Trained for intelligence work, Hiroo Onoda, 22 years old, discovers a philosophy contrary to the official line: no suicide; stay alive whatever happens; the mission is more important than anything else. Sent to Lubang, a small island in the Philippines where the Americans are about to land, this role will be to wage a guerrilla war until the return of the Japanese troops. The Empire will surrender soon after; Onoda, 10,000 days later.

Hanasareru Gang actually encapsulates three titles in one, for when written without Kanji characters, it can describe a gang that is “on everyone’s lips”, “flowery” or “separated from one other”. The film plays with these different meanings to tell the not strictly chronological story of a fun-loving young woman who joins up with a pair of petty criminals. After they steal a car containing a suitcase full of bank notes, they must go their separate ways. When the characters comment on the action in voiceover, ask how much more time the film is going to give them, quote from “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” or suddenly jump back and forth between tragedy and slapstick in tune with the music, one might think that Pierrot le fou got lost and ended up in Japan.

Benkei, a master fighter and killer, vows never to take another life after his conversion to Buddhism. His faith in pacifism, however, is shaken and ultimately broken by the attacks from a trio of fighters known only as the demons. Taking up his sword once more, he sets out to end their murderous terror.

A portrait of three women striving to forge their own rosy paths.

Haruo returns to his hometown for his mother’s second marriage, where he happens to meet his first love Miyuki for the first time in eight years. Miyuki is back in town with her daughter Chiharu, after leaving a failed marriage.

Eight years after the devastating tsunami, the wounds it left in Japan have still not healed. In her touching search for answers, Haru sets out on a long, eventful journey to her home town, where she lost her family in the flood.

An autobiographical docudrama about an attempt to remake Alain Resnais' 1959 film "Hiroshima Mon Amour".

When a Hong Kong teenager from a poor family wins a trip to Japan, he unleashes a chain of events that will soon bring him from his secluded fishing village to Tokyo. On the way, he connects with a barely competent tour guide and a gender-fluid pickpocket. Upon returning home with this merry band of schemers, he and his family of counterfeiters discover that a multinational conglomerate led by a ruthless Japanese developer has found the village, and is determined to raze it to build the new center of world trade.

An aging movie actor who is preparing to shoot a death scene finds himself visited by the spirit of a dead, long-ago lover.

Pig Chicken Suicide is a veritable assault on the senses, mixing violent images of animal slaughter, racial strife and surrealism to tell the story of two Koreans living in Japan who's love is destroyed due to overwhelming racial discrimination.

In a coastal town attracting artists, 14-year-old Sosuke and his friends stay busy painting and helping with school projects. As carefree children interact with secret-laden adults, the sunlit ocean reflects their contrasting struggles—kids embracing challenges while adults seek elusive answers.

Fumiko is a film director who hasn't been able to lay her mother's ashes to rest. At her friend Yume's suggestion, she decides to scatter the ashes into the ocean. They head off to her mother's hometown of Kamakura, but Yume gets arrested and taken into immigration detention. Yume was born to a refugee mother in Japan and grew up in the country but doesn't have residency status. Fumiko fights to get Yume released from the detention center. Then Yume discovers that she is pregnant, which raises the possibility of her release. But she has a miscarriage and her ray of hope vanishes.

On a normal day, a stranger breaks into Sumire's apartment and assaults her. Sumire reacts incredibly calmly to the incident, but she still feels the dangers and uncertainties creeping upon her. All that seem to be peaceful and ordinary start to collapse. As everything slips toward the unexpected, Sumire starts writing again, and reinvestigating the relationships around her.

Makoto is a high school student who works as a rental boyfriend for his classmates, particularly baseball-mad Natsumi. The girl yearns for Makoto and lavishes money on him which he saves up to buy a luxury pillow for his favourite friend, but, all is not as it seems…

A French couple has been living in Lisbon for years, and they return to Paris for a friend's wedding. They announce to another friend they are having dinner with that they are going to split.

A woman is waiting for a man. She deceives the man with her long hair hidden in a wig and jokes that she would go to Hiroshima.

A Letter from Hiroshima explores themes of apology and remembrance. Suwa sends a letter to a Korean actress (Kim Ho-jung) he has worked with in the past requesting her assistance to write and direct a film about Hiroshima. Ho-jung arrives at her hotel and is told to explore the city and wait for Suwa. Initially confused, Ho-Jung soon finds the city mesmerizing and spends days learning about the tragic bombing and the effects that are still felt in the city today. With sparse dialogue and just a handful of characters, Suwa uses black and white images of Hiroshima to convey the scope of the tragedy. In one particularly poignant moment, the voice of a mother is heard lamenting the fact that she had scolded her daughter the day of the bombing. We next see Ho-jung crying in her hotel room, ignoring the ringing phone.

The slow collapse of the relationship between an out-of-work actor and his girlfriend.

A visual documentary of Einstürzende Neubauten, the German underground band, by Japanese cult director Sogo Ishii, made during their 1985 tour of Japan. The band makes an elaborate and remarkably choreographed appearance in the ruins of an old ironworks which was scheduled for demolition; footage of same was incorporated into the movie and a brief appearance on stage.

A film about making films, we follow the exploits of Kiriko, an indie film director who is struggling to make a road movie that ends on a beach. Why do so many independent films have to have a beach scene? That is a question that gets asked along the way but her journey to the location is beset with difficulties, from budget to casting. There is only so much she can do and so she inches forward making compromises and finding ways around problems to realise her dream, all while living in the real world and fulfilling obligations to others as best she can.