Akiko Takakura is one of the last survivors of the atomic bomb explosion of Hiroshima. During Obon, she receives the spirits of her parents and is haunted by memories. Her father is an authoritarian and traditional man. Akiko's childhood consists of constant rejections and beatings. But the horrors of the atomic bomb and Japan's subsequent capitulation change everything. Finally Akiko experiences fatherly love in the midst of Hiroshima's ruins. Official...

One day, Koichi Uehara, a fourth-grader living in the suburbs of Tokyo, picks up a fossil that looks like a large stone while on his way home from school. To his surprise, he has picked up a baby Kappa (a Japanese mythical water creature), who has been asleep underground for the past 300 years. Koichi names this baby creature “Coo” and brings him to live with his family, and soon the two are inseparable friends. However, trouble abounds as Coo...

After the sudden, self-inflicted death of her husband, a young mother (Makiko Esumi) remarries and moves to a remote village on the Sea of Japan with her infant son. She finds herself haunted by the many tragedies of her life, but time begins to heal her wounds as she rediscovers love, understanding, and a sense of peace. One of the finest pieces of Japanese cinema ever made with elegant camerawork, striking visuals and almost entirely natural lighting,...

Why does one need a ferryman? One needs a ferryman where there is a body of water and a bridge does not exist. The village high in the hills has a ferryman, but a bridge is in the works. The poor peasant is about to become even more poor. The people, livestock and goods won't need his services much longer. His life also takes an abrupt turn another way. He meets a girl on a day when everything was supposed to go like any other day.

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 Bolognese, and yet none of them can shed a tear. They are like zombies; devoid of all emotion. With no family, no future, no dreams, and no way to move forward, the young teens decide that the first level of this new existence involves salvaging a gaming console, an old electric...

When Alice transfers to a new middle school, she hears an urban legend about a student who disappeared the previous year and is suspected to have been killed by his fellow students. Even worse, Alice discovers that she lives next door to his former house, a supposedly haunted home now occupied by a reclusive classmate named Hana. Hana and Alice decide to investigate this “murder case” together, but soon find their lack of detective skills may...

Cheng Liang is a young Chinese immigrant living illegally in Japan. Desperate for work, he feigns his identity in order to get a job in a traditional Japanese soba restaurant. He starts his new life living and working with the elderly soba master (Tatsuya Fuji, In The Realm of the Senses), but always fearing to have his real identity disclosed at any moment.

A wild throwback to '70s grindhouse movies, Modus operandi is shockingly violent and even more entertaining. Director Frankie Latina took four years to direct this lovingly constructed ode to disreputable genre flicks, all of it shot in his hometown of Milwaukee. He mashes together Blaxploitation, gore, Italian giallo, Japanese gangster flicks and much more into an irresistible guilty pleasure.

From groundbreaking animation outfit STUDIO 4°C, creators of MFKZ and the upcoming Children of the Sea, comes an extraordinary project with a simple vision: to take an all-star team of some of the best animators working in Japanese animation today, and give each free reign to tell a unique short story. The results are GENIUS PARTY and GENIUS PARTY BEYOND, two animated anthology films full of boundless imagination, fantastic worlds, and unique visual...

A group of teenage friends are found dead, their bodies grotesquely contorted, their faces twisted in terror. Reiko (Nanako Matsushima, 'When Marnie Was There'), a journalist and the aunt of one of the victims, sets out to investigate the shocking phenomenon, and in the process uncovers a creepy urban legend about a supposedly cursed videotape, the contents of which causes anyone who views it to die within a week - unless they can persuade someone...