Black Hair

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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