Acting
A lawyer tasked with defending a robbery-and-murder suspect begins developing doubts about what truly happened.
Ryoko Matsumura is a popular writer in her 50's. She also knows that she has Alzheimer’s. Ryoko Matsumura begins to teach at a university. She meets a young Korean man in his 20's. They become attracted to each other.
A young, temperamental Tokyo beautician struggles to navigate her relationships with lovers, friends, and family.
Antonym is a slow-burning drama about human connection, told through the story of two women who come together to write a radio drama. Vain and self-centred Aya is forced to find a writing partner to work on the radio script she is developing. Heavily reluctant to collaborate, she partners shy co-worker Sachiko, who eagerly embraces the project. Peppered with coincidental occurrences and failed relationships, and powered by the friction and growing friendship between the women as they work on the script, Antonym is as much about the inevitability of human connection as it is about the necessity of it.
When Jun's lover is killed, he decides to kill her murderer. He's then stuck in a time loop and forced to relive the same day over and over, but he continues to kill the same man every day.
Aki and Naoko are childhood friends who are drifting apart as adults. Immersed in her family life, Naoko now has a husband and daughter; Aki, on the other hand, remains single and is on leave from work due to a personal crisis. The plot might sound familiar but it has never been told like this. The director Kusano Natsuka stages the interactions through an actors’ table-read and, as the lines are repeated, the scenes gradually develop into on-location conversations. Moreover, she repositions the dramatic peak of the story to the beginning: Aki has murdered Naoko’s daughter.
Twenty years have passed since the sudden disappearance of Amy, who was the femme fatale in her film studies group. Something that Naoko said triggers emotions that were frozen in time for the group's members, who see each other for the first time after a long absence: Asada Iida,Naoko,Okamoto,Miho,Goto and Kizuka.
Izumi, Yoichi, and their childhood friends had a secret play that no one could tell. In the fall of the third year of junior high school, the two go on a trip to find a cosmos field. Is it possible to grow up "remaining untainted" without losing anything? The story of Izumi, a girl who doesn't want to be a woman.
Ken, an AD at an infomercial company, and their program host, Tada, are both suddenly caught up in pro wrestling started by their company president, Sakaguchi. To save the fate of his company, Sakaguchi decides to start a new program, combining pro wrestling and infomercials as he sees something special in Ken's wrestling... Aoi, a coworker and Ken's girlfriend, become troubled by not being able to accept Ken's excitement over his wrestling.
Beyond the glass, a night that never dawns. The automatic doors work just fine, yet for some reason, it isn’t possible to leave… Shunsuke awakes to find himself trapped. The building is familiar, as are certain of his fellow “prisoners” – members of his old university theatre club. Despite the irrationality of their plight, the group begins rehearsing a play…
