Directing
Dead bodies with eyeballs ruptured are continuously found. Their direct causes of death are heart attacks and they acted like they were possessed right before their deaths. Mizuki is a university student. Her friend dies in front of her. Meanwhile, Haruo’s younger brother dies. Mizuki and Haruo begin to investigate together. They learn that Eiko holds a key to the mystery. Soon, Eiko's eyeballs rupture and she dies by a heart attack. Before she dies, she mentions the word "Shirai-san.”
In 1958, as a deadly typhoon approaches, a young boy embarks on a perilous journey to a haunted mountain pool, determined to calm a sorrowful spirit whose grief has cursed the village with devastating floods.
In central Tokyo, a young man, Sosuke, aspires to be a manga artist. His current work is about a battle between a hunter and a Japanese wolf. He can’t draw the extinct wolf well and struggles to develop the story. One winter’s day, Sosuke finds an animal’s skull while digging foundations at a construction site and takes it home. Is it a Japanese wolf’s skull?
A poignant moral dilemma unfolding against lush mountainous landscapes, The Albino’s Trees follows Yuku (Ryohei Matsuoka), an animal control hunter who takes on a lucrative job to kill a rare white deer considered to be a god of the forest by a nearby village. Though Yuku initially steps up to the task in order to support his mother’s medical bills, his will begins to falter as he gets to know the villagers and the reasons behind their difficult choice to live as outsiders.
The year is 1949. While digging in ten-thousand-year-old red clay deposits, amateur archaeologist Aizawa discovers stone fragments that he believes to be the relics of ancient humans. But in the postwar construction boom, even red clay is in demand as a building material. Seeking funds for his work, Aizawa travels to a sacred mountain to hunt for the horn of a mythical beast known as "Four Eyes."
A young girl named Sumire disappeared 5 years ago after being assaulted by a suspicious photographer Midorikawa in the forest, leaving behind only a severed right arm. Her brother Fumizuki and childhood friend Keisuke are both looking for her.
In the middle of the Meiji era, Japanese painter Rogin goes on a trip to draw a bijin-ga, and he accidentally rescues a salt merchant. The salt merchant describes an out-of-this-world beauty he once loved. This is the prologue to the drama “Suiko,” a tale of humans and nature.
