Arata Iura

After death, people have a week to choose only one memory to keep for eternity.Read More »

Middle-aged Hideo lives alone with an inflatable doll he calls Nozomi. The doll is his closest companion. He dresses it up, talks to it over dinner, and has sexual intercourse with it. However, unbeknown to Hideo, Nozomi was created with a heart. After Hideo leaves for work each day, Nozomi dresses in her maid’s outfit and explores the world outside their apartment with a sense of child-like wonder. She encounters various city residents who metaphorically are as “empty inside” as she is. When Nozomi meets Junichi, who works at a local video store, she falls in love with him and gets a part-time job at the store. She learns about the world through the movies she watches with Junichi, but her happiness with him is interrupted by a dramatic turn of events.Read More »

SYNOPSIS
Terako (Sakura Ando) is a young woman without a job. She has an affair with Iwanaga (Arata Iura) who is married. His wife is in a coma. One day, Terako’s friend kills herself. After that, Terako sleeps all day long and wakes up only when Iwanaga calls her.Read More »

After a long and unsuccessful struggle to get pregnant, convinced by the discourse of an adoption association, Satoko and her husband decide to adopt a baby boy. A few years later, their parenthood is shaken by a threatening unknown girl, Hikari, who pretends to be the child’s biological mother. Satoko decides to confront Hikari directly.Read More »

Every Monday morning, a team of advisors welcome in a facility a group of people that has just died with the mission of helping each one of them to select their best memory that will last for the eternity in the first three days. On Thursday, filmmakers begin to recreate the selected memory, and in the end of the week they screen it in a movie theater and he or she moves to Heaven.Read More »

Quote:
With its focus on the emotional aftermath of a religious cult’s terrorist attack on Tokyo, “Distance” was always going to invite comparisons with the Aum cult’s nerve gas attack on the city’s subway system in 1995.

Yet, rather than simply recreating that tragedy, “Distance” takes us into a far more complex, and decidedly more unsettling, drama about loss and bereavement.Three years after the fictional Ark of Truth group has contaminated Tokyo’s water supply with a genetically-engineered virus, leaving 128 people dead and 8,000 injured, four of the dead cult members’ relatives meet to pay their respects to their loved ones at the lake where their ashes were scattered.Read More »

Synopsis:
A massacre initiated by the followers of an apocalyptic religious sect, the Ark of Truth, leaves more than a hundred people dead – including the self-appointed executioners, slain by fellow cult members.

Three years pass. On the anniversary of the slaughter, four friends who lost loved ones in the tragedy seek solace by journeying to the secluded lake where it all began. They encounter a man who was with the executioners until the very moment the killing began, and their pilgrimage takes a strange, unexpected turn.Read More »

Middle-aged Hideo lives alone with an inflatable doll he calls Nozomi. The doll is his closest companion. He dresses it up, talks to it over dinner, and has sexual intercourse with it. However, unbeknown to Hideo, Nozomi was created with a heart. After Hideo leaves for work each day, Nozomi dresses in her maid’s outfit and explores the world outside their apartment with a sense of child-like wonder. She encounters various city residents who metaphorically are as “empty inside” as she is. When Nozomi meets Junichi, who works at a local video store, she falls in love with him and gets a part-time job at the store. She learns about the world through the movies she watches with Junichi, but her happiness with him is interrupted by a dramatic turn of events. Director Koreeda has stated that the film is about the loneliness of urban life and the question of what it means to be human.
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The film traces the growth and friendship of two very different high-school ping-pong players. “Peco” Hoshino is a brash, arrogant player, determined to turn pro. He taught his quiet, nerdy childhood friend “Smile” Tsukimoto. Smile frustrates his coach and rivals, who recognize his talent for the game since it is just a game to him. To teach him, his high-school coach learns that coaching is more than just training the students to be good ping-pong players. Ironically, as Smile begins to develop his game, Peco undergoes a severe crisis after his defeat by rival players and is unable to play well until he rediscovers the original reasons why he plays ping-pong. Written by nakataohana Read More »