Japan

Japan

Films from Japan

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Japan
  • Casting Blossoms to the Sky

    Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • Drama • With Yasuko Matsuyuki, Masahiro Takashima, Natsuki Harada,  • 2012 • 160 minutes

    In 2011, a journalist arrives in Nagaoka, a Japanese village that underwent destruction during both World War II and the 2004 Chūetsu earthquakes, and is now notable for the f...

  • Seven Weeks

    Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi • Drama • With Toru Shinagawa, Takako Tokiwa, Yumi Adachi, Hirona Yamazaki, Shunsuke Kubozuka, Shusaku Uchida, Takehiro Murata, • 2014 • 171 minutes

    At 2:46 PM on March 11, 2013, Mitsuo Suzuki takes his last breath at the ripe old age of 92. As the patriarch’s far-...

  • Hanagatami

    Directed by Nobuhiko Ōbayashi • Drama • With Shunsuke Kubozuka, Tokio Emoto • 2017 • 169 minutes

    In 2016, Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director of the cult Japanese film HAUSU was diagnosed with lung cancer and given only a few months to live. Despite not much time left, for what was supposed to be hi...

  • A Man Vanishes

    Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1967 • 130 minutes

    One of the most important and complex works by two-time Palme d'Or winning director Shohei Imamura, A MAN VANISHES begins as an investigation into one of the thousands of missing persons cases that occur in Japan each year.

    The film ...

  • Air Doll (Hirokazu Kore-eda)

    Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda • Drama • With Bae Doona, Arata Iura, Itsuji Itao • 2009 • 116 minutes

    A present-day fable for the increasing disconnect we find in urban life, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Air Doll transports the Galatea myth to present day Tokyo.

    A life-size sex doll (Bae Doona, The Host)...

  • Education and Nationalism

    Directed by Hisayo Saika • Documentary • 2023 • 108 minutes

    A group of uniformed Japanese schoolchildren make their way to class. But what they will be taught when they get there is a subject increasingly under government scrutiny.

    EDUCATION AND NATIONALISM traces growing government interventio...

  • We Are Little Zombies

    Directed by Makoto Nagahisa • Drama • With Keita Ninomiya, Mondo Okumura, Satoshi Mizuno, Sena Nakajima • 2019 • 120 minutes

    When four young orphans—Hikari, Ikuko, Ishi, and Takemura—first meet, their parents’ bodies are being turned into dust, like fine Parmesan atop a plate of spaghetti Bologn...

  • Maborosi

    Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda • Drama • With Makiko Esumi, Tadanobu Asano • 1995 • 110 minutes

    One of the finest films of Japanese cinema, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first feature film Maborosi is a story of love, loss, and ultimately, regeneration.

    Haunted by the mysterious loss of her grandmother ma...

  • Shusenjo: Comfort Women and Japan's War on History

    Directed by Miki Dezaki • Documentary • 2019 • 120 minutes

    One of the most heated issues in Japan and Asia today is over something that occurred 80 years ago: the Japanese Imperial Army's sexual enslavement of an estimated tens of thousands of Korean women and others in military brothels during ...

  • Happy Hour (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

    Directed by Ryûsuke Hamaguchi • Drama • With Sachie Tanaka, Hazuki Kikuchi, Maiko Mihara • 2017 • 317 minutes

    A powerful affirmation of the immersive potential of cinema. HAPPY HOUR is a slow-burning epic chronicling the emotional journey of four thirtysomething women in the misty seaside city o...

  • Creepy

    Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • Drama • With Hidetoshi Nishijima, Yûko Takeuchi, Toru Baba • 2017 • 130 minutes

    Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who made his name with classics CURE and BRIGHT FUTURE, gets back to his roots by putting the thumbscrews to the audience with his latest, CREEPY. A year after a botch...

  • Bright Future

    Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • Drama • With Joe Odagiri, Tatsuya Fuji, Tadanobu Asano • 2003 • 115 minutes

    "Casts its spell by drawing out the horror of everyday existence bit by bit, and then tossing in some otherworldly weirdness that makes the hair on the back of your neck try to run for cove...

  • The Exquisite Short Films of Kihachiro Kawamoto

    Directed by Kihachiro Kawamoto • Documentary • 2014 • 99 minutes

    Kimstim is proud to present this collection of short films from one of the world's greatest stop-motion animators: Kihachiro Kawamoto. Famous for his beautiful, expressive puppets, Kawamoto began his career in the 1950s. Honing his...

  • 100 Years of Japanese Cinema

    Directed by Nagisa Oshima • Documentary • With William B. White, Nagisa Oshima • 1996 • 52 minutes

    The forces and themes that have shaped his nation's cinema drive Nagisa Oshima's forceful and erudite essay. Based entirely on archive footage, it considers the rediscovery of Daisuke Ito's Chuji's...

  • The Apology

    Directed by Tiffany Hsiung • Documentary • 2016 • 104 minutes

    THE APOLOGY follows the personal journeys of three former 'comfort women' who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.

    Some 70 ...

  • Karayuki-San, The Making of a Prostitute

    Directed by Shohei Imamura • Documentary • 1975 • 75 minutes

    From the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, Japanese girls and women were trafficked out of Japan and sent to foreign countries like China, Singapore, and beyond to serve as indentured prostitutes. These women were called Karayuki-san.

    Shoh...

  • Red Persimmons

    Directed by Shinsuke Ogawa, Peng Xiaolian • Documentary • 2001 • 90 minutes

    The ostensible subject of this remarkably beautiful film is the growing, drying, peeling and packaging of persimmons in the tiny Japanese village of Kaminoyama. The inhabitants explain that it is the perfect combination ...

  • The Written Face

    Directed by Daniel Schmid • Documentary • With Tamasaburo Bando • 1999 • 89 minutes

    In Japanese theater women's roles are traditionally played by men. The man playing the woman's role, the Onnagata, does not imitate the woman, as in the West, but tries to capture her significance. He need not st...

  • Tatsumi

    Directed by Eric Khoo • Animation • 2014 • 98 minutes

    TATSUMI celebrates the life and work of Japanese comics artist Yoshihiro Tatsumi-a manga pioneer who elevated the genre to a new level of creative expression and adult realism. A comics-crazed teenager, Tatsumi began to get published and was ...

  • Tokyo Waka

    Directed by John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson • Documentary • 2013 • 63 minutes

    Tokyo is a digital metropolis and wellspring of spectacular pop culture, its commercial crossroads carpeted with people day and night. Above them, watching from perches on buildings and power lines, are more than 20...

  • Tokyo Idols

    Directed by Kyoko Miyake • Documentary • 2017 • 88 minutes

    "IDOLS" has fast become a phenomenon in Japan as girl bands and pop music permeate Japanese life. TOKYO IDOLS—an eye-opening film gets at the heart of a cultural phenomenon driven by an obsession with young female sexuality and internet ...

  • Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo

    Directed by Jessica Oreck • Documentary • With Takeshi Yoro • 2010 • 90 minutes

    Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo delves into the mystery of Japan's age-old love affair with insects. From the first fabled emperor who dubbed Japan the "Isle of the Dragonflies," to the cricket-selling businesses of the ...

  • Kochuu

    Directed by Jesper Wachtmeister • Documentary • 2003 • 53 minutes

    Kochuu is included on the same DVD as Great Expectations KOCHUU is a visually stunning film about modern Japanese architecture, its roots in the Japanese tradition, and its impact on the Nordic building tradition. Winding its way ...

  • Koshien: Japan's Field of Dreams

    Directed by Ema Ryan Yamazaki • Documentary • 2019 • 94 minutes

    Baseball is life for the die-hard competitors in the 100th annual Koshien, Japan's wildly popular national high school baseball championship, whose alumni include U.S. baseball star Shohei Ohtani and former Yankee Hideki Matsui. But...