Social & External
The people behind it
Journalists Ichiro Sakai and Junko cover the wreckage of a typhoon when an enormous egg is found and claimed by greedy entrepreneurs. Mothra's fairies arrive and are aided by the journalists in a plea for its return. As their requests are denied, Godzilla arises near Nagoya and the people of Infant Island must decide if they are willing to answer Japan's own pleas for help.
In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.
It is a bilingual love comedy about a Japanese divorcee who has to take in an American male roommate to make ends meet. Mikuko Abe is stuck, both in life and in love. When her daughter sends her Vincent, an American visitor, the last thing she wants is to let him live with her. What she doesn't know is that opening up her door to this stranger will soon open up her world.
Based on a real-life story, this drama focuses on a small group of Allied soldiers in Burma who are held captive by the Japanese. Capt. Ernest Gordon, Lt. Jim Reardon and Maj. Ian Campbell are among the military officers kept imprisoned and routinely beaten and deprived of food. While Campbell wants to rebel and attempt an escape, Gordon tries to take a more stoic approach, an attitude that proves to be surprisingly resonant.
A story about how Kuboshima Seiichiro overcomes various difficulties to open Mugonkan, an art museum in Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture, featuring artworks by students before they were sent to fight in WWII.
Kei longs for a “normal” life in rural Japan. But for a transgender man who is jobless in his own hometown, getting to normal is one steep climb, especially since Erin, his Canadian partner, longs to move to Tokyo, where they can live openly and freely. On his way to a job interview in the city, Kei meets a stranger. Abandoning his journey to help her, he discovers she is the owner of the hot springs—a place he once loved, as a child. Kei's encounter with the healing waters is complicated by Erin’s turning up as well. Finally, the couple—one on the men's side, the other, on the women's—must face the truth about their divergent wishes, identities, and murky notions of belonging.
Young girl Saori, a cook at a diner, loves cooking. There is a regular customer Kujo, a guy who has never touched the plate of her cooking. Saori decides to give him a bag of sandwiches for him to eat at home, but later she finds that he gave it to a Buddhist monk on a street. She does not know that Kujo only eats what he cooked himself. A tragicomedy of 4 couples suffering about eating.
Kii, a young woman who isn't good at studying or sports, finds her passion in life through amateur photography. While trying to take a good shot one afternoon, she meets fledgling singer Yuu by chance and together they move towards the light of accomplishing their dreams.
The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson, the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.
The referendum whether nuclear power plants should be banned has been held in Japan. People must decide their future.
Ai's mother sends her to live with a cult commune, where she remains for seven years. After the cult is broken up by the police, Ai struggles to fit in with society.
A Swiss nun falls in love with a Japanese engineer.
37 year old sales manager Iwatsu is so caught up in work, he's unable to truly live his life. One night while looking at his graduation album on his phone, he receives a sudden call from a girl named Kana. He's taken to his hometown Kobe, where he lived as a teenager. Slowly, by way of Kana, Iwatsu's past is resuscitated.
Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. When Shingen dies, his generals reluctantly agree to have the impostor take over as the powerful ruler. He soon begins to appreciate life as Shingen, but his commitment to the role is tested when he must lead his troops into battle against the forces of a rival warlord.
A young journalist interviews an elderly woman about being forced into prostitution in Borneo at a brothel called Sandakan No. 8.
A photographer on a trip to Japan meets a fellow American woman and they quickly fall in love. However, when he returns home to the US, he discovers that she is his girlfriend's older sister.
Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of his two daughters and senile mother. New prospects seem to open up when the beautiful Tomoe, a childhood friend, comes back into he and his daughters' life, but as the Japanese feudal system unravels, Seibei is still bound by the code of honor of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedence. How can he find a way to do what is best for those he loves?
In a dreamlike wandering, the city becomes a constant rendezvous. In the hustle and bustle of strange streets, the protagonists face disillusionment and life’s obstacles that make them believe that their desire for freedom is only possible in dreams.
When the bizarre mass suicide of 54 high school girls throwing themselves in front of a subway train appears to instigate a string of suicides around the country, Detective Kuroda strives to find the answer, which isn't as simple as he had hoped.
A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.
A submissive hooker goes about her trade, suffering abuse at the hands of Japanese salarymen and Yakuza types. She's unhappy about her work, and is apparently trying to find some sort of appeasement for the fact that her lover has married.
In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse they would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.
Based on the writer/director's childhood, FARMING tells the story of a young Nigerian boy, 'farmed out' by his parents to a white British family in the hope of a better future. Instead, he becomes the feared leader of a white skinhead gang.
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
An elderly couple journey to Tokyo to visit their grown children, only to find them preoccupied and self-involved.
The true story of 20-year-old Colleen Stan, a hitchhiking woman abducted by a young couple and held captive for seven years, during which time she's tortured and forced to live as a slave to her captors.
Tom and Mae Garvey are a Tennessee farming couple battling violent floods to save their land. In addition to natural disasters, the Garveys fight to stop a selfish land developer and a local corporation from foreclosing on their farm. While Mae stays at home to care for their children and tend to the crops, Tom finds work as a scab at a steel mill to preserve his family's property.
A former American G.I. joins a yakuza family after his release from prison in post-World War II Osaka.
Kiyoha rises from the lowly courtesan ranks to the high class position of Oiran in the steamy red-light district of Yoshiwara. She is determined to stand on her own two feet and live life as she pleased.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
When lapsed Jew and former cardiologist Harry suddenly decides to spend his retirement as a pig farmer in Nazareth, Israel, the move deeply shocks his family and his new neighbours. Back in New York, Harry’s ex-wife Monica is trying to manage the lives of their adult children, Annabelle and David, as well as her own.
The legendary Roberto Duran and his equally legendary trainer Ray Arcel change each other's lives.
West Philadelphia basketball star Sergio Taylor deals with the pressures of fame while his brother and sister have their own issues with ambition.
Kyôko, a traumatized young Japanese girl, finds herself struggling with her self-confidence in her adult life. Growing up in a family without her mother and her sister, she constantly questions the rationale of sex and the notion of liberty in modern Japanese society.
A 21-year-old girl is released from prison, only to deal with the neighborhood gossip about her and family conflicts. She decides to save one million yen, move to where no one knows her and keep repeating the process.
Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering on a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano. The school's stern master can choose to intervene, or to let Kano decide his own path.
In a once-scenic village now dominated by a vast trash disposal site, a young man yearns to break free from a cruel fate tying him to the very grounds.
MMA legend Patton James, now a commercial fisherman, is pulled back into the cage when his brother is in danger. Reuniting with his old coach Sammy, he commits to one final fight in one championship against the brutal champion Xavier Grau.
As a country arms itself for war, a family tears itself apart. Forced to avenge his father's death but paralyzed by the task ahead, Hamlet rages against the impossibility of his predicament, threatening both his sanity and the security of the state.
