Shozo Ichiyama

The Horse Thieves tells the story of gangsters who murder the father of a young family and steal the herd of horses that belonged to the village.

An old Chinese woman visits Japan to find her missing daughter whom she adopted in post-WWII China. Her granddaughter and a retired Japanese policeman join her search.

A film director wanders the world alone after breaking up with her boyfriend, finally gaining inner peace.

村と町の間に流れる川で船頭をしているトイチ(柄本明)は、ひたすら渡し船を漕ぐ毎日を送っている。人々は、川上に建設中の橋の完成を心待ちにしていた。ある日トイチは、一人の少女(川島鈴遥)と出会う。トイチは何も話さず身寄りのない少女と一緒に生活することになる。

Journalist Guo lives together with her mother and daughter in the same residence. The relation of three generations looks placid but there is actually a fierce undercurrent of rebellion and resistance.

Double revenge in two separate stories. Set in both a near future and the historical past, revenge is served not by violence, but by love.

Kanjaki, a middle-aged man, goes to a quiet countryside village. He puts his helmet on a shrunken old woman whom he meets by chance in a shop. As soon as he presses the buttons on the helmet one by one, she suddenly remembers forgotten happy moments and is rejuvenated. This is just the beginning. Kanjaki goes on to make the village people recall their happy pasts, but his face is lined with worry and a sadness that deepens. What is the secret of this helmet? And what is he trying to do with it? Director Sabu’s Happiness suggests happiness and suffering are intertwined through the unusual scenario of a helmet reminding people of the happiest moments of their lives. Sabu convincingly portrays the notion that memory is the source of both happiness and suffering, and how memory affects our lives.

1999年、中国山西省のフェンヤン。小学校の女性教師タオと、炭鉱で働く青年のリャンズー、そして若き実業家のジンシェンは、仲の良い幼なじみ。2人の男性からともに想いを寄せられていたタオは、やがてジンシェンからのプロポーズを受け入れて彼と結婚し、男児を生む。2014年。ジンシェンと離婚し、ひとり暮らしをしていたタオのもとへ、息子のダオラーがやって来て、2人は数年ぶりに親子水入らずの時を過ごす。

With Taiwan remaining in the grip of martial law in 1982, a group of filmmakers from that country set out to establish a cultural identity through cinema and to share it with the world. This engaging documentary looks at the movement's legacy.

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

大地震が起きる前の中国四川省・成都、巨大国営工場「420工場」が新興住宅地として再開発するため閉鎖された。かつて420工場で働いていた労働者たちが語る家族や初恋の人、一緒に働いた仲間との思い出……。閉鎖されていく工場の様子と彼らのインタビューを映し出しながら、現在に至る中国の変遷を浮き彫りにしていく。

Soon after he lands in America, Ali, a Muslim man from Pakistan, begins his search for his estranged wife, Nadia. On his journey, Ali meets with Teppei, a Japanese traveller hitchhiking his way across America, and Sarah, a local trailer park girl, who help him in his search. The three travellers succeed in finding Nadia, who, to Ali’s dismay, is living a new life in Phoenix with another man. Ali spends the rest of his stay in America with Teppei and Sarah, anxiously wondering where his life is leading. In the brief time they are together, the three companions commit to helping one another. Ali, Teppei and Sarah begin a new journey, to find their own individual identities and in the process they find each other. Big River is a road movie, a tale about the borderless realm of friendship and its ability to transcend culture.

A young dancer, her security-guard boyfriend and others work at World Park, a bizarre cross-pollination of Las Vegas and Epcot Center where visitors can interact with famous international monuments without ever leaving the Beijing suburbs.

Three disaffected youths live in Datong in 2001, part of the new "Birth Control" generation. Fed on a steady diet of popular culture, both Western and Chinese, the characters of Unknown Pleasures represent a new breed in the People's Republic of China, one detached from reality through the screen of media and the internet.

China's rapid changes from the late-1970s to the early 1990s, as seen through the lives of four performers in a theater troupe.

Acclaimed director Abolfazl Jalili offers a compassionate story of the young Afghan refugee who lives illegally in Iran. 14-year-old Kaim drifts to the Delbaran crossing on the Afghan-Iran border, where he finds work at a coffee shop frequented by truck drivers. He feels at home in this small oasis of friendliness, though the sounds of war can be heard in the background, violent bandits prowl the roads, and opium is everywhere. As we watch Kaim run from one task to another day after day, we soon realize that we are watching a boy who is being cheated out of his childhood.

Itinerant Kurdish teachers, carrying blackboards on their backs, look for students in the hills and villages of Iran, near the Iraqi border during the Iran-Iraq war. Said falls in with a group of old men looking for their bombed-out village; he offers to guide them, and takes as his wife Halaleh, the clan's lone woman, a widow with a young son. Reeboir attaches himself to a dozen pre-teen boys weighed down by contraband they carry across the border; they're mules, always on the move. Said and Reeboir try to teach as their potential students keep walking. Danger is close; armed soldiers patrol the skies, the roads, and the border. Is there a role for a teacher? Is there hope?

Women struggle in a Shanghai brothel where everything only appears to be beautiful.

Sukezo, a farmer manga comic artist, takes up the art rock business by setting up a shop in a shed by the river. He tries hard to be successful, but business does not go well and the family becomes progressively poorer.

首都圏にある某都市に住む男、我妻諒介は犯罪者を追い詰めるためには暴力の行使も辞さない凶暴な刑事。その行き過ぎた捜査と粗暴な性格から、勤務する港南警察署内[3]でも危険人物として敬遠されていた。警察という組織にあって浮いた存在の我妻だったが、自身を理解してくれる数少ない同僚と他愛もない冗談を言い、ある時は酒を酌み交わし、完全な孤立は辛うじて免れていた。 そんなある日、港で麻薬売人の惨殺死体が発見される。我妻は新人の菊池を引き連れ事件の捜査を開始し、容疑者への殴る蹴るの暴行すら厭わない強硬な手段で次々と犯行グループの全貌を暴いていく。そして、覚醒剤を密売する組織の首謀者として暗躍する実業家の仁藤、その手下で殺し屋の清弘の存在をつきとめた。だがその中で我妻は、あってはならない驚愕の事実にも辿り着いてしまうのだった。

A supernatural arthouse drama.