Ikiru (1952)

Danusia and her daughter Basia live far away from the modern world, in tune with the rhythm and laws of nature, among animals and the spirits of the dead. The peace and sense of security offered by their enclave come at a price - the women increasingly long for contact with other people. Bucolic is an affectionate observation of people who live in a different way. It evokes a curiosity about their world and a desire to take a closer look.

Fukumi is a high school janitor whose father was a gangster. He works at the school as a janitor instead of belonging to the gang so he can watch out for Yui, the daughter of his deceased father's brother Majima Yoshiki. One day, a gang feud erupts. Yoshiki is killed and Yui becomes the next target.

A house. A shelter. A man the last one left in the homeland. A woman returns to her community every year. The daughters and husband who have lost all traditions. A rapper who raps in the old language. In 1990 Susanna marries Udo. Their wedding is the last one celebrated between two Saxons in their village. After that the couple emigrated like half a million of Transylvanian Saxons. After 30 years in Germany the relationship between Susi and Udo has gone stale and they haven't taught their native language to their daughters that feel just German. Georg on the other hand is proud of his identity. He hopes with his rap to spread the young generations about the heritage to make them proud of being a Saxon. This is the choral story of a family who is learning to change in order not to disappear.

One man, one camera, one goal...to capture the essence of adventure. An experimental, often abstract new type of filmmaking process creating color rich visuals combined with a lush soundtrack that grounds the project. A unique cinematic experience.

The war in the South Pacific, a country doctor in Colorado, victims of industrial pollution in a Japanese village — all were captured in unforgettable photographs by the legendary W. Eugene Smith. This program showcases over 600 of Smith’s stunning photographs and includes a dramatic recreation in which actor Peter Riegert (Crossing Delancey, Local Hero) portrays the artist using dialogue take from Smith’s diaries and letters. Interwoven through the program are archival footage and interviews with family and friends of this brilliant, complicated man, whose work developed from twin themes of common humanity and social responsibility.

Severely battered from the Beirut Port Explosion on August 4th, Minerva passed away eight days later. Her son Joseph, while still grieving for his loss, sunk into a long and absurd bureaucratic path through the inept system that disowned his mother as a victim of the blast. Minerva is gone. The explosion has snatched her soul, and the city walls have not yet recognized her as a martyr. There is no poster of her smiling face among those of the victims. Their faces are memories that will haunt us for the rest of our lives. Perhaps her son, devastated by her passing, seeks to etch her image into the city's memory. Perhaps he is seeking some confession to the crime. This is a place that casts out its children, whether dead or alive.

"Meebo" is an elementary school student and loves fish. His life is indeed "fish-a-holic". Meebo stares at the fish, draws the fish and eat the fish every day. His father worries that he is a little different from other children but his mother always encourages and supports him warmly rather than worrying. After entering a high school, Meebo is still obsessed with the fish as usual. For some reason, Meebo is getting along with rogues like a protagonist of a tale. Eventually, Meebo starts to live alone. With encounters and re-encounters, he is still loved by the people around him and pushes forward straight to his only way.

Jaira, Chelsea, and Alecz catch up with their friend, Sujee, who lives in Busan, Korea. Sujee is lonely and seeks people who understand her struggles as a diaspora but her friends have a different image of her life there.

Every year, five to ten percent of all deceased Berliners are buried by the authorities because no relatives are found. Most of them are put into the ground by mortician Bernd Simon going alone. But sometimes companions do turn up and say goodbye in their very own way. An observational documentary about an undertaker who actually wanted to become an entertainer, a bizarre city portrait and a mirror of how we deal with death, mourning and commemoration.

Upon arriving at a remote cabin in the redwoods, Kath and her boyfriend find a mysterious younger couple already there — the rental has apparently been double-booked. They decide to share the cabin with these strangers until the next morning, but her boyfriend disappears with the young woman, which sends Kath in a spiral to find an explanation for their sudden breakup — but the truth is far stranger than she could have imagined.

The interview team, who went to talk to the mother of Mr. K, a high school girl who died in suicide, learns that she frequently wrote on suicide sites before Mr. K died. According to his mother who read the email left on the computer after Mr. K's death, Mr. K started to think about suicide by watching some kind of video on the Internet. According to the testimony of his friends, it seems that Mr. K's actions and remarks began to die at some point. What exactly is that video? We were able to contact the suicide applicants on the bulletin board of the suicide site and talk to those who have seen the video. It was the beginning of horror and fear...

Renowned Japanese poet Shuntaro Tanikawa teams with former "rock chick" Wakako Kaku to craft this pensive love story told almost entirely in still photographs. After steering a suicidal man away from the brink of despair, an astronomical observatory worker teaches him her favorite watchword, "Yah Chakya!" ("I, Seagull"). The phrase had once been spoken by the first female cosmonaut, and was the call-sign for the Soviet spacecraft Vostok. But for this woman, the word has taken on greater meaning; not only is it a greeting, but a secret handshake and a symbol of the universe as well. Upon learning the phrase, the man finally finds the strength to go on living.

A woman who focused on being a mother feels that she no longer has any purpose now that her son has made his own life, until one lonely night after a storm, she finds a nest on the ground of her garden with a small egg that gives signs of life, and when she rescues him she puts aside her monotony to take care of him as if she were his mother.

Fiona spurs on her neighbor Niall's fantasies by letting him watch her when she has sex with her lover. Their distance-based window affair becomes a dangerous game once Fiona meets Niall's pregnant wife.

Sadie tries to recollect what she remembers from one night that led to a tragic moment. As she’s trying to recollect these memories we witness her try to survive a world that lacks compassion, the feelings of someone following her, and living with a Mental Health system that doesn’t care or feel anything toward her. “The Shattering!” is an examination into why it’s important to have compassion or empathy, especially for those who are the most vulnerable fueled by its dark nightmarish atmosphere, and compellingly disturbing visuals.

In 2018, director Sakamoto was working on a script for his new movie "Baby Assassins." He learns of a hitman business network called "Kansai Hitman Association" and applies for interviews as a reference for writing scripts. He is introduced to Masayuki Kunioka, a freelancer who is known as the strongest hitman in Kyoto. Sakamoto decides to follow Kunioka in his day-to-day life. One day, Kunioka kills the wrong person due to miscommunication with the client and is targeted by both the hitmen sent from the furious client and those who are aiming for revenge on behalf of the victim.

At the baseball club of Yame Kita High School in the southern part of Fukuoka Prefecture, fierce competition for positions was always fought. In the qualifying that led to the spring selection tournament (Koshien), the team was beginning to get jerky due to the unexpected defeat. At that time, the main players such as Ace are ordered by the director to go to the drama club. Repulsive players. However, there is a memory of the sad scars of the unexpected seniors.

30 years of the band, 30 years of Japanese rock. The story of passion toward the band and music.

After the disaster of March 2011, the Japanese authorities decided to build a gigantic 15 meter high, 500 kilometer long, anti-tsunami wall, separating the land and the ocean. But what is the environmental and human impact of this wall? The population is divided on their opinion: should they cut the island off from the sea or stay vulnerable to tsunamis? Is there another way?

An executive of a shoe company becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped and held for ransom.

When Mona marries the seemingly decent police officer Hisham, she finds out there is more into him than what he shows to the people.

Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.

Vera is born into a family of considerable wealth, but she is rather bored and tired of this luxurious but all-too-safe and secluded life. One day Vera’s mother invites her to go with her to help the poor. She is so moved by helping the poor that she decides to devote her life to their cause. One of the people she helps, a man named Maxim, is enchanted by her beauty. He writes Vera a letter, asking her to come back to help with his worsening medical condition which is a complete lie. She goes by herself to his apartment, where he rapes her. While he is sleeping, Vera escapes his grasp, and then she bludgeons him to death. One year later she is introduced to Prince Dol’skii. He shows off his excellent marksmanship skills, and she is soon smitten with him. They get married and Vera decides that she must tell him the truth about what happened to her.

Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, "Rashomon" is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.

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.

With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare's King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa's late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.

A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.

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.

Sega's children, born into post-war Chinese rule, can't relate to their father's love for Japanese culture, having grown up under Japanese rule before WWII.

Baroness Troixmonde, aka Filibus, the mysterious air pirate, commits her thefts then retreats to the safety of her zeppelin. Filibus' airship is manned by a staff of mask-wearing lackeys who instantly obey her every command. An esteemed detective sets out on her trail, and Filibus attempts to frame him as the daring villain-- all the while slipping in between male and female disguises to romance the detective's sister!

A five-person team of gold prospectors in the Yukon has just begun to enjoy great success when one of the members snaps, and suddenly kills two of the others. The two survivors, a husband and wife, subdue the killer but are then faced with an agonizing dilemma. With no chance of turning him over to the authorities for many weeks, they must decide whether to exact justice themselves or to risk trying to keep him restrained until they can return to civilization.

The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual. The senior counselor for the Iyi clan questions the ronin’s resolve and integrity, suspecting Hanshirō of seeking charity rather than an honorable end. What follows is a pair of interlocking stories which lay bare the difference between honor and respect, and promises to examine the legendary foundations of the Samurai code.

Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds -- with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk -- that it might be possible for him to take human form.

Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa's tightly paced, beautifully composed "Sanjuro." In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a proper samurai on its ear.

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.

Yukie, the well-bred daughter of a university professor, is shocked when her father is relieved of his post for his political teachings during a purge of anti-militarism in pre-war Kyoto. Years go by as she is courted by two of her father's former students; one a fiery leftist, the other more moderate and equable.

Japanese peasants Matashichi and Tahei try and fail to make a profit from a tribal war. They find a man and woman whom they believe are simple tribe members hiding in a fortress. Although the peasants don't know that Rokurota is a general and Yuki is a princess, the peasants agree to accompany the pair to safety in return for gold. Along the way, the general must prove his expertise in battle while also hiding his identity.

Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.