Mayumi Amano

From rising cult filmmaker Kenichi Ugana, a misfit horror-themed rock band moves to the Japanese countryside to write the greatest punk anthem in the world.

On a quiet street in Helsinki, Sachie has opened a diner featuring rice balls. For a month she has no customers. Then, in short order, she has her first customer, meets Midori, a gangly Japanese tourist, and invites her to stay with her.

Sakiko, a young bank teller, has an unhealthy obsession with money. Thieves hold up the bank, kidnapping Sakiko in the process, but eventually crash their car, resulting in a suitcase stuffed with cash falling into a nearby river. For the remainder of the film, Sakiko begins a desperate quest to retrieve the money.

In a small town on the countryside, every young boy is forced to have the same bowl-head haircut known as the "Yoshino-gari" hairstyle. Then one day, a drastic change occurs when a transfer student with bleached hair comes from Tokyo.

What words carry, what they miss, and what they connect. Yunmei has left her hometown of Taiwan to pursue a career as an actress in Japan. She’s been cast in the lead role of a film but struggles with her Japanese lines. Around the same time, her older sister, Huiling, who works for a major corporation in Taiwan, is transferred to Japan, and Yunmei helps her find a place to live. However, the two often clash. Real-life sisters and actors vividly portray these distant siblings, gently capturing the uncertainty of communication and the quiet moments when hearts unexpectedly connect.

In Yamada Village, which is suffering from a serious shortage of wives due to the wave of depopulation, four young men from the village decide to go on an arranged marriage. However, they are rejected by the other women because of Yamada Village's too rural character. Then, a beautiful young writer, Ayakoji Reika, who has fallen into a slump, comes to Yamada Village in search of the countryside...

Thirty-year-old, unemployed Kenji (Kaku Tomohiro) spends his days listlessly at his parent's home, which is set to be torn down any day now. He relives his childhood when a third grader out for summer vacation nails Kenji with a water balloon, and Kenji fights back.

Sawako, working in a bank, tired of the usual everyday life, once she met the chef of French cuisine Yukio Goto and spent the night with him. Sawako pretends to be the daughter of an upscale hotel owner and has an affair with Yukio.

Student dropout Naomi befriends happy-go-lucky Maki, who lives with his blind adoptive mother Midori. When Midori becomes seriously ill and is hospitalized, Naomi and Maki send her tapes from an imaginary trip around the world. Their relationship grows while recording, but they only dare engage in rough, painful horseplay.

Moving into an old house in the rural countryside, videographer Komai converses with its former owner Umemoto, drawing from personal memories to discuss histories, cartographies and the passage of time, reflecting upon the changing tides of tradition and progress within generational spans of the town’s history.

There is an old love hotel in Tokyo's Shinjuku district where couples can rent a room by the hour for romantic assignations. However, few of its regular customers seem to come there for sexual encounters; the hotel has become a hangout for rootless teenagers, senior citizens looking for a place to relax, and kids that play under the watchful eye of its owner...

After 5 years in Tokyo, 5 part-time jobs, 5 boyfriends, Sawako's life is going nowhere. When her father gets seriously ill, she has to take over his struggling factory. Gradually she becomes the decider of her own life.

Minako is at the age where her father is more like an alien to her than a person. The situation is exacerbated when he comes home drunk one night and tries to climb on top of her. Minako's mother deserted them for another man when Minako was a child. Now working as a hostess, she has little time for her own six year-old daughter, Yu, Minako's half sister. Both girls are yearning for their mother's love. Minako runs into Yu at a game center in the mall and proposes they take a trip. She changes out of her school uniform and into adult clothes and the pair hops on an overnight bus out of the city.

A visit to the employment office, practicing dance steps, making music with friends: several women’s everyday lives are captured in long shots and with a superb sense of place. A film like a summer's day, bright, friendly, with the occasional chill.

Three storylines interweave in Border Line. Kurosawa (Murakami Jun) finds himself driving a taciturn young man named Matsuda (Sawaki Tetsu) halfway to Hokkaido, after accidentally knocking him off his bike; their fragile bond can last only so long. The housewife Aikawa Misa (Aso Yumi) tries desperately to hold her family together when her husband gets laid off and her son is so frightened of bullies at school that he throws up in the car; she’s reduced to taking a McJob in a convenience store. And Miyaji (Mitsuishi Ken), who collects debts for a yakuza gang, gets into trouble when his partner Kitajima puts personal need above duty.

In a noisy classroom, biology teacher Madoka proceeds with his lesson in a small voice.He is unable to look the students square in the face nor admonish them for talking or sleeping in class. Only Tsubura looks upon him with a smile. Very much infatuated with Madoka, she records his idiosyncrasies in her biology notebook through illustrations--tapping his hand on his chin is proof that he is annoyed; messily tugging at his hair when he is at his wits' end. Tsubara, fearful of being forgotten after she dies, only eats things loaded with preservatives so that even if she dies, her body will not rot. Believing such things, Tsubara, thinking that "combining Mr. Madoka who has no one with me who needs someone would surely be perfect," gets the wild idea of a genital exchange with Madoka.

Ichiro is a 32-year-old man who has voluntarily become his mother's "pet," retreating from the flow of life suggested by society: university, career, marriage, parenting, home ownership. His quiet life at home (with an alcoholic father) is interrupted when the ex-boyfriend of Ichiro's mother and his "white idol" daughter move in. Under a cramped roof, the five search for happiness.

A successful office lady, who has made herself sexually available to a doctor, has her routine disrupted when her former boyfriend's son appears in her life. She is not connected to the boy, but his father has been in an accident.

The story takes place in a new residential area in the outskirts of Tokyo. A family photograph adorns the living room of the Hashimoto family. It is a heartwarming shot of the three family members from when they first moved here, finally having bought their own home that they had wanted for so long. Wife Michiko hangs the laundry everyday. Husband Ken-ichi leaves for work without a word. Son Hiroaki has a part-time job, returns home early and disappears into his room. The Hashimoto Family no longer eats meal together at the dining table or spends time together in the living room. Michiko yearns for a different relationship with her family and is gradually overcome by loneliness. While feeling pressured from the trifling matters that occur within the residential community, Michiko tries to fill the emptiness that she hides in her heart.

Can we ever be freed from the "curse of love" that dictates "women must be pretty and fall in love"? A humorous and at times affecting chronicle of an artistic girl’s life and loves from elementary school, through university, into young adulthood.

The family of 20-year-old Ohta is celebrating his birthday in a restaurant. What was supposed to be a happy familiar reunion turns into a big mess.

Sensitive and refined drama in which experiences from the puberty of a female teacher and a piano student reflected in the world of the younger generation they have contact with.

One summer day, Tokiko, whose life in Tokyo is going nowhere fast, gets on an overnight bus to the countryside. When she arrives, she meets Yohei, a high school student struggling to deal with the sudden death of a young man who was like a big brother to him.

Manzo is a fisherman in a small seaside community who lives and works alone, but longs for a relationship and maybe a wife. When a sign is posted advertising a matchmaking party with city women, all the men gussy themselves up and videotape themselves for the dating service. Manzo borrows a camcorder and tries his luck, but his rehearsed speech doesn't go as planned. When showing the videotape to the prospective dates, he discovers something unusual: There is a woman and her son living in one of his closets. Instead of kicking them out, he encourages them to stay and develops a relationship with them that makes the other fishermen jealous.

The film tells the story of a Drive-In worker and a young tramp who has been left alone by her boyfriend somewhere in Hokkaido. Things seem to work out at the beginning but as time goes by the newly formed relationship between the tramp and the Drive-In worker starts to show the workers harmful will of possession, which finally leads to the somehow sad but also optimistically interpretable ending.