Hwang Young-Chang

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.

After his parents die, a teenager goes to live with his older brother. As his loneliness grows, he becomes engrossed in practicing modern dance with his classmate.

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?

After his shot at a record deal falls through, Jun transfers to sleepy Nagoya and begins busking songs by his favourite 1970s glam rock band, Exne Kedy. The music catches the eye of fellow fan Ibuki and the pair soon fall in love over their shared musical taste.

A woman and a man meet on an abandoned tochka along the seashore in Hokkaido, Japan.

Student dropout Naomi befriends happy-go-lucky Maki, who lives with his blind adoptive mother Midori. When Midori becomes seriously ill and is hospitalized, Naomi and Maki send her tapes from an imaginary trip around the world. Their relationship grows while recording, but they only dare engage in rough, painful horseplay.

While fooling around with a self-made crossbow, Kira accidentally kills his classmate Itsuki. For lack of evidence, the young student is found innocent. However, his trial is widely covered by the mass media, and the following uproar from society won’t leave his family untouched.

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.

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.

A young woman discovers that a sex tape made without her knowledge is circulating online. Paranoia takes over, along with a sense of injustice. Her sudden terror of video triggers a downward spiral where she loses all social bearings.

Reiko teaches at an acting school while working as an actress. Her career has stalled, but she gets a chance to appear in a feature film from a theater group friend who is now a famous actor. Reiko is elated, but then she gets a call from her mother Yukie.

A young couple go on the run after the murder of his mother.

A visit to the employment office, practicing dance steps, making music with friends: several women’s everyday lives are captured in long shots and with a superb sense of place. A film like a summer's day, bright, friendly, with the occasional chill.

In a small cockpit-like room, we see two young hip hop musicians from Tokyo giving birth to a beat: precision, patience and camaraderie hold sway, midway between an installation and sitcom.

Shiori, Yukiko, Kyoko and Sachiko continue to live each day with untold feelings inside. Unable to forget a colleague on a trip, a father who is ill, a friend who works at a store that is about to close, and a long-lost husband, each woman takes a step forward. There is a light that sometimes embraces them, calmly and gently.

The first part of a trilogy focusing on the northeast Tohoku region, co-directed by Sakai Ko and Hamaguchi Ryusuke. Impromptu interviews were carried out with disaster victims mainly along the Sanriku Coast, which had been ravaged by tsunamis several times prior to the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, and makes emotional discoveries within dialogues between close-knit people including families and workmates.

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.

Newly commissioned short film, starring Tomona Hirota and Sumire Ashina.

The world’s most talented young pianists compete in the International Chopin Piano Competition, held every five years in Warsaw, Poland. A rare behind the scenes look at the triumphant highs and crushing lows of competition, Pianoforte is both a testament to the remarkable power of music and an intimate coming-of-age portrait.

A day in the life of Kiriko, who has not told anyone about her father's disappearance.