When theater director Naoko (Saori) holds auditions for the first production of her newly established all-female theater troupe, she is mesmerized by Haru (Arisa Nakamura), who barges into the old garage where they rehearse. Naoko chooses Haru to be the lead as she leverages her power as director to pursue the romantic connection that fuels her voracious creativity. However, as opening night approaches, jealous entanglements threaten the artistic and ideological aims of the project, as well as the relationship with Haru pulling Naoko from her womanizing ways. Based on her own semi-autobiographical novel Kokan, cult theater director and actress Junko Emoto makes her directorial debut in this playful drama relishing the toil and passion of a struggling creative life on and off stage. -JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film
A girl, Yūri Kurahashi, after watching a cursed videotape together with her friend in a haunted house, becomes trapped in a conflict between the two murderous ghosts: Sadako Yamamura and Kayako Saeki
Hideo Suzuki is a 35-year-old mangaka assistant, whose life seem to be stuck around his exhausting but low-paying job, unfulfilled dreams, strange hallucinations and unsatisfying relationships. He sees himself as a supporting character in his own life, has low self-esteem, resulting in frustration. One day, the world as Hideo knows it is shattered by the presence of a disease that turns people into homicidal maniacs, whose first instinct is to attack and devour the nearest human.
Based on the award-winning novel of the same name, this boldly erotic yet movingly tender portrait of a group of vulnerable, variously wounded people — a depressed housewife, her high-school-aged lover, and his best friend, who is struggling to provide for himself and his senile grandmother — whose intersecting lives yield both sorrow and a fragile, yet enduring, hope for a brighter future. (TIFF)
The story of a strange living situation in a 2LDK apartment in suburban Tokyo. There are five residents ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-eight. They are not in any way romantically involved with one another, but one can see subtle hints of affection and friendship among them. In the end, however, none of them really know each other.
