Cinequest

Letters from Iwo Jima

The story of the battle of Iwo Jima between the United States and Imperial Japan during World War II, as told from the perspective of the Japanese who fought it.

Nobody Knows

In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.

Our Little Sister

Three sisters live together in a large house in the city of Kamakura. When their father – absent from the family home for the last 15 years – dies, they travel to the countryside for his funeral, and meet their shy teenage half-sister. Bonding quickly with the orphaned Suzu, they invite her to live with them.

Tokyo!

Three distinct tales unfold in the bustling city of Tokyo. Merde, a bizarre sewer-dweller, emerges from a manhole and begins terrorizing pedestrians. After his arrest, he stands trial and lashes out at a hostile courtroom. A man who has resigned himself to a life of solitude reconsiders after meeting a charming pizza delivery woman. And finally, a happy young couple find themselves undergoing a series of frightening metamorphoses.

The Sky Crawlers

Youngsters called Kildren, who are destined to live eternally in their adolescence. The Kildren are conscious that every day could be the last, because they fight a war as entertainment, organized and operated by adults. But as they embrace the reality they are faced with, they live their day-to-day lives to the full.

Outrage

When a tough yakuza gangster is betrayed by his bosses, it means all out war. Bodies pile up as he takes out everyone in his way to the top in a brutal quest for revenge.

Like Someone in Love

An old man and a young woman meet in Tokyo. She knows nothing about him, he thinks he knows her. He welcomes her into his home, she offers him her body. But the web that is woven between them in the space of twenty four hours bears no relation to the circumstances of their encounter.

Beyond Outrage

As the police launch a full-scale crackdown on organized crime, it ignites a national yakuza struggle between the Sanno of the East and Hanabishi of the West. What started as an internal strife in Outrage has now become a nationwide war in Outrage Beyond.

Minamata

War photographer W. Eugene Smith travels back to Japan where he documents the devastating effect of mercury poisoning in coastal communities.

My Darling of the Mountains

In the mountain hot springs of Izu, Japan, a love triangle is waiting to happen. It is the late 1930s when the paths of a stunning woman fleeing Tokyo, a handsome bachelor and a blind masseur cross.

10 Promises to My Dog

One day a puppy comes to the house of Akari, who has just turned twelve, and was trying hard to act strong after her mother suddenly fell ill. She immediately falls in love with the puppy and names it "Socks" after the paws which looked like they had white socks on. Akari was together with Socks day and night. However, as Akari grows up, her feelings and interest moves away from Socks. Year by year, their distance grows, which also leads to her physical distance as she moves to a far off city, and must leave Socks behind to a childhood frien...

SPEC: Zero

High school student Saya Toma lost her parents and younger brother in an airplane accident. Detective Akio Kondo came and told her "your family has a high possibility that they were killed by people who have spec." That was the first time she heard of "spec". 6 years later, Saya Toma, who has never forgotten what the Detective said, decides to become a detective. She returns to Japan after receiving training by the FBI in the United States. Saya Toma is assigned to work unsolved cases in the Public Security Bureau. Meanwhile, because of S...

Mori, The Artist's Habitat

In 1974, Morikazu is 94 years old and his wife Hideko is 76 years old. They live at a house in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. The garden at their home is full of trees, plants and insects. Morikazu paints pictures of the creatures in his garden and also observes them. This has been his daily routine for more than 30 years. Morikazu and Hideko entertain visitors every day including a photographer and the couple living next door.

Pecoross' Mother and Her Days

Laid-back baby boomer Yuichi (Ryo Iwamatsu) is a middle-aged manga artist and singer-songwriter when he isn't at his salaryman day job or watching out for his elderly mother. Suffering from increasing dementia since her husband's death, Mitsue (Harue Akagi) is a constant source of comic energy or annoyance for Yuichi, and he and his son must soon decide if they should put her in a home for the elderly. Jumping back in time, we see how Mitsue (played by Kiwako Harada) tracked the tumult of the latter half of the 20th century, being raised as ...

My Hawaiian Discovery

Minori Oyamada, a put-upon editor at a travel-guide publishing company, is asked by an old friend to plan her forthcoming wedding party in Hawaii. After persuading her boss that it will be a work trip, Minori departs for Hawaii with the intention to find and marry a rich man. But when Minori arrives, she encounters three different men who complicate her original goal...

Hill of Freedom

Kwon, a language school instructor, stops by her old workplace and receives a thick envelope addressed to her. A Japanese instructor named Mori had proposed to her two years ago. She turned him down. Mori had immediately gone back to Japan, but now was back in Korea looking for her. The envelope enclosed letters he had written to her during his search through Seoul. After Kwon finishes the first letter in the lobby, she grows faint coming down the staircase and drops the letters. She gathers them off the floor and sees there are no dates on ...

The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)

An eight-hour fiction shot for a total of twenty-seven weeks, over a period of fourteen months, in a village population forty-seven in the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It is a geographic description of the work and non-work of a farmer. A portrait, over five seasons, of a family, of a terrain, of a soundscape, and of duration itself. A film-as-adaptive-landscape. A georgic in five books.

Kubi

Lord Oda Nobunaga plans to control Japan where rival warlords battle by waging war against several clans. His vassal Araki Murashige stages a rebellion and promptly disappears.

SPEC: Close~Reincarnation

Mysteries are revealed like the words "Simple Plan," "Third Secret of Fatima" and also the mysterious white man which are all mentioned in the movie "SPEC: Heaven".

SPEC: Close~Incarnation