With Beauty and Sorrow

Two sisters learn about the existence of their long-lost biological mother, but the younger is unable to accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.

In 1960s Tokyo, Gonda owns a bar in which the gay, cross-dresser, and trans scenes meet. Gonda is in a relationship with the madam of the bar, Leda. As the younger Eddie starts a passionate affair with Gonda, she ignites the jealousy of Leda, unaware of another kind of history between them.

A city boy, Shinji, is sent to live in the countryside to escape the Tokyo bombings, where he experiences the complexities of rural school life, including a power struggle with the local class leader, Takeshi.

A recently released gangster has to cope with the recent shifts of power between gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling.

Expelled from her group for losing her virginity, blind travelling musician Orin endures a life of hardship, abuse, and poverty while wandering the countryside, finding brief companionship with an army deserter, and struggling against a society that marginalises her.

In 17th-century Japan, two Portuguese Jesuit priests seek their mentor, who is rumoured to have committed apostasy, and to propagate Catholicism.

An outlaw pushes the residents of Edo's red light district to rebel against a growing number of stifling, moralistic laws.

In 1863, when American warships approach Japan, an enigmatic ronin becomes an important figure in a complex game of power between the Shogunate and the empire.

Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.

Crippled Kabuki player Tonbo is taken in by a strolling company of itinerant actors. An influential publisher notices his honest, bold art, and nurtures him despite persecution and betrayal.

During the peaceful Tokugawa period, handsome samurai Gonza becomes entangled in a tragic love triangle and a web of deceit while trying to advance his social standing through the tea ceremony.

A mountain bandit abducts a woman who demands he kill his other wives to please her, leading to a cycle of violence and madness fueled by superstition and obsession.

A reimagination of the myth of Himiko, focused on her divine role as a sun goddess's oracle and her forbidden love for her half-brother Takehiko, which threatens her power and the kingdom's stability.

When a lone traveller stumbles upon a remote, drought-stricken village, he finds himself engulfed in a whirlpool of myth, mystery, and magic: in a nearby pond reside spirits who hold the fate of the town’s inhabitants, including lovers Akira and Yuri, in their hands.

A foreign spy using the Sorge alias is assigned to Tokyo the capital of Japan just prior to the outbreak of World War II and in the midst of the Japanese imperial ambitions in Eastern Asia. The spy becomes acquainted with a sympathetic communist who like he is attached to the ideals of freedom and rule of the masses. Sorge is able to feed the Soviet Union useful information regarding the Axis allies and their movements in Asia and beyond.

Years of warfare end in a Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate, and samurai spy Sasuke Sarutobi, tired of conflict, longs for peace. When a high-ranking spy named Tatewaki Koriyama defects from the shogun to a rival clan, however, the world of swordsmen is thrown into turmoil. After Sasuke is unwittingly drawn into the conflict, he tracks Tatewaki, while a mysterious, white-hooded figure seems to hunt them both. By tale’s end, no one is who they seemed to be, and the truth is far more personal than anyone suspected. Director Masahiro Shinoda’s Samurai Spy, filled with clan intrigue, ninja spies, and multiple double crosses, marks a bold stylistic departure from swordplay film convention.