Kyôko Ôbayashi

After meeting as college students in the cinema town of Seijo, husband and wife Nobuhiko and Kyoko Obayashi have gone on to direct and produce acclaimed films together for 60 years.

The only movie theater on the Onomichi seafront is about to close its doors. Its last night of screenings will be an all-night marathon of Japanese war films. When lightning strikes the theater, three young men in the audience find themselves thrown back in time into the world inside the screen.

Director Nobuhiko Obayashi is often dubbed "the cinematic magician." 2 and a half years ago, he was diagnosed with cancer with 3 months to live. But that did not deter him from making movies. Currently, he's in post-production on the second film he's done since being diagnosed. He's driven by the message of his late friend, the maestro Akira Kurosawa: "Movies have the power to stop fighting. Look 400 years ahead and keep on shooting." We follow Obayashi's extraordinary career and his mission to use the big screen to send out a message of peace.

Spring, 1941. Sixteen-year-old Toshihiko attends school in the coastal town of Karatsu, where his aunt cares for his ailing cousin. Immersed in the seaside's nature and culture, Toshihiko soon befriends the town's other extraordinary adolescents as they all contend with the war's gravitational pull.

Relatives gather from afar in wintery Ashibetsu upon the death of patriarch Mitsuo. A mysterious woman named Nobuko suddenly shows up. Her appearance gradually exposes wartime secrets and Mitsuo's unknown past.

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 fireworks it launches annually in memory of the victims of war. She is there for two reasons: firstly, to learn about the experiences of Nagaoka's inhabitants, and secondly, to watch a stage play written by an enigmatic student of her ex-boyfriend, which depicts the bombing of the city during WWII.

It is the second work of the Oita trilogy of Obayashi . Following " Nigori Snow ", Ise Masazo draws a song written by composers and songwriter "Farewell of 22 years old " as a motif and draws a story of love that spans two generations of mother and daughter.

After his parent's divorce, Kazuo Saito moves with his mother from Onomichi and must leave his girlfriend behind. At his new school, Kazuo is surprised to reunite with his childhood friend Kazumi. After talking about old times, they walk to a place from their childhood called the “Lonely Watering Place” but the two accidentally fall into the water. They quickly crawl out, but suddenly realize that they have switched bodies!

Four people are discovered brutally murdered in an up-scale high-rise apartment. All the victims appear to be family, but as the investigation deepens it is discovered that one of the victims isn't related to the family.

Depicts the life of Nagaharu Yodogawa.

Based on real-life events, this erotic thriller tells the sad and sadistic tale of a Japanese geisha whose behavior spiraled out of control.

People from all walks of life (a high-school student, a middle-aged businessman, a yakuza chief, etc.) all receive mysterious messages from loved ones who were killed 3 months earlier in a shipwreck. They are instructed to go to a small island in the Inland Sea that evening. At the stroke of midnight, the lost ship emerges from the sea and they are given a brief time to say their final words to their lost loved ones, before the deceased must once again board the ship and it sinks back into the depths.

It is 1965. High-school student Takeyoshi Fujiwara hears "Pipeline" by the Ventures, and is mesmerized by their unique sound. With three friends, he forms a band called "The Rocking Horsemen." A warm and comic glimpse into high-school and small-town life in Japan in the 60's.

The Kitao family is coping with the loss of the eldest daughter, Chizuko, who was killed in a freak accident the year prior. When the other daughter Mika is suddenly in a dangerous situation, Chizuko returns as a ghost to save her; reunited with her sister, Mika begins spending time with Chizuko again.

This 150-minute documentary, directed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi on the set of Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, features behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with cast and crew.

Shunzo is a popular greengrocer in a town near Tokyo. His life, and the lives of his wife Michi, and their two children, undergoes a dramatic change when he encounters Li, a poor college student from China.

An entire Japanese international grade school—and all within—are mysteriously transported to a foreboding desert wasteland. As the story unfolds, the diminishing student body weathers this apocalyptic crisis while searching for clues about their surroundings, and dealing with psychological breakdown and dangerous exterior forces.

During the fervently nationalist months leading up to World War II, a rebellious teenager is transferred to a new primary school in a small Inland Sea town. He vies with the school’s reigning bully, who takes a romantic interest in his older stepsister. When they learn she’s going to be sold to a brothel to pay off her father’s debts, they form an uneasy alliance to free her.

A Francophile filmmaker in a creative rut tries to pass off a free-spirited young actress as his movie-star wife in order to fool a chief from the South Seas.

After a series of chance meetings a shiftless motorbike enthusiast Ko begins a romance with a carefree girl Miyo, after teaching her to ride. When Miyo proves herself a biker prodigy Ko begins to fear that she is destined to crash.

A lonely high schooler suddenly meets the love of his life out of thin air. Is she a real person or a figment of his imagination?

After noticing in the news there was a fire in an old canal town, Eguchi recalls visiting there a decade ago as a university student.

Yoshiyama Kazuko is in the 3rd grade of junior high. One day, she's cleaning in the laboratory, she notices of the smell of lavender, and faints. Since then, she has acquired a mysterious power to travel time.

9th-graders Kazuo and Kazumi take a tumble at a temple in a small seacoast town in Japan. Through supernatural intervention, their minds and bodies are switched, and the result is a touching and hilarious coming-of-age comedy as they attempt to survive the pressures of junior high school life.

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip to the countryside to visit her aunt at their ancestral house. She invites her six friends, Prof, Melody, Mac, Fantasy, Kung Fu, and Sweet, to join her. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

Colorfully edited vignettes of young characters having fun in the town of Onomichi.

Colorfully edited vignettes of young characters having fun in the town of Onomichi.

Experimental short film depicting the life, perhaps real, perhaps a dream, of a young girl named Emi. Emi travels to the city where she encounters her counterpart, Sari, and falls in love with…a vampire?

A young couple go on a picnic in the forest, where the woman reveals that she is pregnant.