A variety of foreigners share their experiences of living in Japan.
Social & External
Documentary about and with the Japanese electronic composer and artist Merzbow.
In December 2021, Hideki Kuriyama began devoting his days to one singular goal: hoisting the championship trophy at the 2023 World Baseball Classic. How did he mold his players into one of the best and strongest Samurai Japan teams in history? A close-up documentary that looks back on Samurai Japan's path to becoming world champions, along with valuable behind-the-scenes footage captured by the team's dedicated crew.
In August 2020, Olympic artistic swimmer Ona Carbonell became a first time mother, an experience that reshaped her life overnight.
At the foot of Mount Fuji, Mohei Honda, 36, is one of the most innovative tea masters in Japan. Leading a handful of young trailblazers, Mohei experiments, refines and reinvents the ancient art of tea, which he holds up as the perfect antidote to the modern world’s frenzy. He even travels the country in a “tea truck” with an ambitious goal: to win over the hearts and minds of Tokyoites...
Revered sushi chef Jiro Ono strives for perfection in his work, while his eldest son, Yoshikazu, has trouble living up to his father's legacy.
Becky's Music Story features all her released music videos and a documentary that includes live footage and her tv program Becky Music Life.
The incredible true story of a man who lived for 15 months trapped inside a small room, naked, starving and alone... and completely unaware that his life was being broadcast on national TV in Japan, to over 15 million viewers a week.
Dear Pyongyang is a documentary film by Zainichi Korean director Yang Yong-hi (Korean: 양영희, Hanja: 梁英姬) about her own family. It was shot in Osaka Japan (Yang's hometown) and Pyongyang, North Korea, In the 1970s, Yang's father, an ardent communist and leader of the pro-North movement in Japan, sent his three sons from Japan to North Korea under a repatriation campaign sponsored by ethnic activist organisation and de facto North Korean embassy Chongryon; as the only daughter, Yang herself remained in Japan. However, as the economic situation in the North deteriorated, the brothers became increasingly dependent for survival on the care packages sent by their parents. The film shows Yang's visits to her brothers in Pyongyang, as well as conversations with her father about his ideological faith and his regrets over breaking up his family.
From 1853, Japan opens up to the West. Numerous works of art and woodcuts find their way to Europe. The Impressionists and later the European artistic avant-garde succumb to this one passion: Japonism. 150 years after the beginning of the Meiji period in 1868, the film traces the connections between Japan and the Western world.
Why do 600 inhabitants of the small southern Spanish town of Coria del Río bear the surname "Japón"? It is the legacy of an unusual expedition that took place 400 years ago: In October 1613, the samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga boarded the galleon "San Juan Bautista" on behalf of the ruler Date Masamune in Sendai, Japan. In addition to merchants, warriors and Spanish sailors, the Spanish Franciscan monk Luis Sotelo, who spoke fluent Japanese, also embarked. The legation wanted to obtain permission from the Spanish King Philip III and Pope Paul V to open a new sea route to India alongside the spice route; in return, Christian missionaries were to be sent to Japan. When he set off, Hasekura Tsunenaga had no idea that the journey would take seven years. Who was this Japanese samurai? What is known about his motives and what is known about the actual background to the expedition?
Bianca Charamsa made her way to Japan during this year's cherry blossom season to get to grips with the country's character through conversations with some of its artists. Although two violent atomic catastrophes - the bombing of Hiroshima and the Fukushima nuclear disaster - have shaken and shaped modern-day Japan, the artist Takahiro Iwasaki believes that memory of 6th and 9th August 1945 is slowly fading, despite all the folded cranes left by visitors to the memorial sites. Natural catastrophes like sea- and earthquakes also rock Japan time and time again; perhaps this explains why the Japanese aesthetic Wabi Sabi incorporates both beauty and decay...much like the beauty of the cherry blossom as it withers during the annual festival of Hanami
Kazuo Hara follows the lives and activities of Yokota Hiroshi and Yokozuka Koichi, members of an activist group made up of people with cerebral palsy.
A Japanese food writer embarks on her quest to cook the perfect Sunday roast. Her gravy evokes a taste of home both gently Japanese and quintessentially English. Blending her passion for British food with the memories that accompany each dish, it is a labor of love with all the trimmings.
A filmmaker plays with diary-docu and fiction as his camera joins his ventures into a phone dating club. Bored to death, hormones running, and desperately wanting to talk to someone his own age (preferably a girl), he walks into a local phone dating club. Can he hook up with someone? Borrowing the form of a diary-movie, the director unfurls an unpredictable and imaginative look into his own persona. 8mm experimental film by Murakami Kenji, the film that made his name.
An independent crowd-funded documentary that celebrates the sixty-year legacy of the world's greatest monster, Godzilla. Filmed on location in Tokyo to document kaiju-related events, locations and to interview cast, crew and fans of the Godzilla series about their passion and experiences with the King of the Monsters.
On 11 March 2011, an earthquake caused a tsunami to hit the Tōhoku (Northeast) region of Japan. In this film, survivors of the tsunami rebuild as cherry blossom season begins. The film is a stunning visual haiku about the ephemeral nature of life–and of the healing power of Japan's most beloved flower.
From 1937 to 1948 gold, silver, platinum and diamonds were looted by the Imperial Japanese Army during its campaigns throughout Asia-a treasure trove worth billions whose location has remained unclear until today. Rumor had it that hundreds of tones of gold were buried in the Philippines. In an exciting investigation of the 20th century history, director Egmont R. Koch embarks on the trail of Japan’s stolen gold, a journey that takes him to the Philippines, Hong Kong and Japan. He discovers documents that prove that the disappeared loot was used to finance the Cold War in Asia and to corrupt nationalist Japanese politicians.
A documentary about Tama, a female calico cat who gained fame for being a station master and operating officer at Kishi Station on the Kishigawa Line in Kinokawa, Wakayama, Japan.
To test its top-secret Human Hibernation Project, the Pentagon picks the most average Americans it can find - an Army private and a prostitute - and sends them to the year 2505 after a series of freak events. But when they arrive, they find a civilization so dumbed-down that they're the smartest people around.
The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.
During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.
A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster's moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time.
Follow the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, Paul endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee.
Imprisoned in the 1940s for the double murder of his wife and her lover, upstanding banker Andy Dufresne begins a new life at the Shawshank prison, where he puts his accounting skills to work for an amoral warden. During his long stretch in prison, Dufresne comes to be admired by the other inmates -- including an older prisoner named Red -- for his integrity and unquenchable sense of hope.
Los Angeles, 1969. TV star Rick Dalton, a struggling actor specializing in westerns, and stuntman Cliff Booth, his best friend, try to survive in a constantly changing movie industry. Dalton is the neighbor of the young and promising actress and model Sharon Tate, who has just married the prestigious Polish director Roman Polanski…
World War II soldier-turned-U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels investigates the disappearance of a patient from a hospital for the criminally insane, but his efforts are compromised by troubling visions and a mysterious doctor.
Harley Quinn joins forces with a singer, an assassin and a police detective to help a young girl who had a hit placed on her after she stole a rare diamond from a crime lord.
An insurance salesman begins to suspect that his whole life is actually some sort of reality TV show.
101-year-old Rose DeWitt Bukater tells the story of her life aboard the Titanic, 84 years later. A young Rose boards the ship with her mother and fiancé. Meanwhile, Jack Dawson and Fabrizio De Rossi win third-class tickets aboard the ship. Rose tells the whole story from Titanic's departure through to its death—on its first and last voyage—on April 15, 1912.
The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.
Ethan Hunt and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the world's fate at stake and dark forces from Ethan's past closing in, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan must consider that nothing can matter more than his mission—not even the lives of those he cares about most.
Armed with only one word - Tenet - and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.
Eighties teenager Marty McFly is accidentally sent back in time to 1955, inadvertently disrupting his parents' first meeting and attracting his mother's romantic interest. Marty must repair the damage to history by rekindling his parents' romance and - with the help of his eccentric inventor friend Doc Brown - return to 1985.
The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
A stranger in the city asks questions no one has asked before. Known only by his initials, the man's innocent questions and childlike curiosity take him on a journey of love, laughter and letting go.
King Charles VI declares that Knight Jean de Carrouges settle his dispute with his squire, Jacques Le Gris, by challenging him to a duel.
Caleb, a coder at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.
Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet's exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence-a commodity capable of unlocking humanity's greatest potential-only those who can conquer their fear will survive.
