Movies: Bitters End

Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director, still unable, after two years, to cope with the loss of his beloved wife, accepts to direct Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There he meets Misaki, an introverted young woman, appointed to dri...

Four independent stories set in modern China about random acts of violence....

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 hims...

Centaur lives a modest life with his family in rural Kyrgyzstan until he abruptly becomes the center of attention when he is caught stealing a racehorse at night. A story inspired by the myth when horses became the wings of men....

Only three days before their high school festival, guitarist Kei, drummer Kyoko, and bassist Nozomi are forced to recruit a new lead vocalist for their band. They choose Korean exchange student Son, though her comprehension of Japanese is a bit rough...

Asako lives in Osaka. She falls in love with Baku, a free-spirit. One day, Baku suddenly disappears. Two years later, Asako now lives in Tokyo and meets Ryohei. He looks just like Baku, but has a completely different personality....

It’s 1940, and the population of Japan is divided over its entry into World War II. Satoko, the wife of a fabric merchant, is devoted to her husband but is beginning to suspect he’s up to something. Soon she allows herself to be drawn into a game in ...

Years after her boyfriend left her for the big city and promised to bring her there after he’s settled down, a Chinese woman sets out on a journey to be reunited with him....

Director Yoshiyuki Kishi and screenwriter Takehito Minato—the team behind acclaimed boxing epic Wilderness—reunite to adapt Ryo Asai's prize-winning novel. A sensitive drama about the aberrant in a society without regard for diversity, the story unit...

On the set of a dark war time drama at an old movie studio, a young director, Toshio Murai, is trying to complete his debut film. The two starring actresses, Hitomi Kurokawa and Saori Murakami, play sisters in his film. Murai has a crush on Hitomi, t...

Tomiko, a middle-aged woman, waits patiently for her husband, who disappeared thirty years ago, to return. She lives alone in a declining fishing village, and continues to search tirelessly for her husband. One day she meets Nami, whose husband has a...

Toma lives in a small riverside town with his brutish father and his father's girlfriend. Witnessing his father's predilections for abuse, Toma becomes anxious that he will have inherited those urges....

Sanae, who went to prison after failing to kill her ex-boyfriend six years ago, meets Kenta, a forest ranger, and gets married. Sanae and Kenta's married life takes a new turn when the wife of Sanae's ex-boyfriend appears. Sanae still can't forget he...

The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025....

At Beijing World Park, a bizarre cross-pollination of Las Vegas and Epcot Center where visitors can interact with famous international monuments without ever leaving the city’s suburbs, a security guard betrays his dancer girlfriend by pursuing anoth...

"Ars longa, vita brevis" – art is long, life is short. This is one of Japanese music icon Ryuichi Sakamoto's favorite quotes, and the message that he leaves for viewers at the end of his final concert film, shot before he succumbed to cancer in March...

This work is a 12-year story of Mana, a woman who cannot accept the death of her best friend, staring at her as she tries to step forward while having deep sorrow....

As a decades-old state-run aeronautics munitions factory in downtown Chengdu, China is being torn down for the construction of the titular luxury apartment complex, director Jia Zhangke interviews various people affiliated with it about their experie...

Miyamatsu, who works as a cable-car operator, is also a film extra. Through his different characters he has been living the life of a stranger, only playing that part. Finally he comes face to face with his own life, the one he had lost. Debut film....

In 1969, Sawada is filled with idealism that permeated that era and starts working as a gonzo journalist for a weekly magazine. Two years later, Sawada interviews activist Umeyama with senior reporter Nakahira. Umeyama boasts that his group will stea...