Directing
In a near-future Japanese city bracing for a devastating earthquake, a group of teenage friends navigate personal struggles and fractured bonds amid rising tension.
When three heroic American doctors — Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian — enter Gaza to save lives in the middle of a genocide, they find themselves caught between medicine and politics, risking everything to expose the truth.
Journalist Shiori Ito embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country's outdated judicial and societal systems.
Intimately following 1st and 6th graders at a public elementary school in Tokyo, we observe kids learning the traits necessary to become part of Japanese society.
A look at NYC’s gentrification and growing inequality in a microcosm, Class Divide explores two distinct worlds that share the same Chelsea intersection – 10th Avenue and 26th Street. On one side of the avenue, the Chelsea-Elliot Houses have provided low-income public housing to residents for decades. Their neighbor across the avenue since 2012 is Avenues: The World School, a costly private school. What happens when kids from both of these worlds attempt to cross the divide?
After his wife leaves him, Charles begins to assume the identities of strangers at a local coffee shop to avoid being alone.
We all know Curious George. But what about his creators, Hans and Margret Rey? From fleeing Nazi Germany on handmade bicycles to encounters with exotic animals in Brazil, the Reys lived lives of adventure that are reflected in the pages on one of the most treasured children’s book series of all time.
Baseball is life for the die-hard competitors in Koshien, Japan’s national high school baseball championship, whose alumni include US baseball stars Shohei Ohtani and former Yankee Hideki Matsui. As popular as America’s World Series, the stakes are beyond high in this single-elimination tournament. For Coach Mizutani, cleaning the grounds and greeting guests are equally important as honing baseball skills, however, demonstrating discipline, sacrifice and unwavering dedication. Director Ema Ryan Yamazaki follows Mizutani and his team on their quest to win the 100th annual Koshien, and, in the process, goes beyond baseball to reveal the heart of the Japanese national character.
First graders in a Tokyo public elementary school are presented with a challenge for the final semester: performing "Ode to Joy" at the ceremony for the new incoming first graders. Ayame, who often struggles to keep up with the group, is determined to play a major part — the big drum.
The rule "Don't judge a book by its cover" cannot apply in FPJ's "Alamat ng Lawin". For it is as silly as its poster, which resembles Carlo J. Caparas films. Just from the poster.
A ten year-old tomboy must weigh her loyalty to her trusted older brother as the siblings become complicit in a hate crime.
The sites and sounds at the 800-year-old Horenji Temple in Kyoto — electro music, English, takoyaki, a kaleidoscopic elephant — would seem to belie its long history. But in order for the family-run temple to thrive in the 21st century, it must continue to reinvent itself. Intimately following future head priest Scion (30) along with his fiancée Haruka and firstborn sister Ariya, critically-acclaimed director Ema Ryan Yamazaki captures one unexpected corner of Japanese society's struggle to balance tradition with progress.
Wheels of Fate follows Miyajima’s quest to restore Muhomatsu no issho journeying between Tokyo, New York, and Lisbon while recounting its fateful history using interviews, archival material, and animation.
One young Japanese man struggles with his destiny as the next in line to take over his family's 800-year old temple.
