Aiko Masubuchi

In a near-future Japanese city bracing for a devastating earthquake, a group of teenage friends navigate personal struggles and fractured bonds amid rising tension.

"Ars longa, vita brevis" – art is long, life is short. This is one of Japanese music icon Ryuichi Sakamoto's favorite quotes, and the message that he leaves for viewers at the end of his final concert film, shot before he succumbed to cancer in March 2023. Consisting of only Sakamoto and his piano, Opus features the final live performances of 20 songs that Sakamoto meticulously curated to encapsulate his distinguished 40-year career.

A deeply personal portrait of one of the most enigmatic and influential figures in Japanese cinema: filmmaker, writer, and revolutionary Masao Adachi.

The life of a man, transitioning from a hunter-gatherer existence in the mountains to a life in the farm. One day, he comes across an ox, which somehow, he succeeds in leading back to his home. He lives with the animal, which becomes his companion in a life of changing seasons.

In a country ruled by the Liberal Democratic Party, running on austerity and neoliberal ambitions, for most of its postwar years, gender and economic inequalities have become increasingly acute in Japan. Takashi Nishihara, a filmmaker who has been following the youth protests in Japan notices that there is one party that seems to be raising issues of gender and economic in the political sphere, the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), a party about to enter its hundredth year and consistently burdened by its historical connotations. Though an outsider of the party, Nishihara gained unprecedented access to the JCP and driven by his interest in the younger party members who find hope in the JCP, the resulting documentary goes beyond party politics and observes the current grassroots leftist movements in Japan. It also becomes witness to the larger and deep-seated patriarchal system that continues to quell momentums of hope.

Bodega Bay's final performance: Mercury Lounge, June 3rd, 2016, NYC Filmed in one take on hi8 (with a brief tape glitch cutting "Second Row Center" short)

Somewhere in Japan, two men live in a new age house, through the windows of which the reflections and ripples of the rain shimmer in black and white. One of them explains to a journalist that the house’s design allows them to gather rainwater and use it for the plants that they grow in order to meet their needs. The other brings them tea. One is granted speech and social consideration, the other labour. But when they leave the house to walk through the fields or go fishing for eels, or when they try to kill a tortoise for a meal, the positions are reversed. An unexpected cruelty suddenly spices up this slapstick variation on diverging relations to nature in contemporary Japan. (Nathan Letoré)

On April 7, 2020, the first state of emergency was declared in Japan. People disappeared from the streets and movie theaters and museums closed their doors. Whatever happens in the world around us, the existence of you and I remain unchanged. As long as we can recognize each other correctly, we should be able to maintain our sanity to some extent. It doesn't matter if someone is still asleep in the hospital, or if the neighbor's cat has gone to heaven. Memories live on vividly in our memories. Sometimes they can evolve into exaggerated images, but what is important to me will continue to evolve inside of me. It's the same even if they don't exist in this world. I think it's almost like a prayer. Surrendering myself to the world of images―what this world needs is imagination! Including all the love we have for our neighbors, strangers, and partners.