Masahiro Hara

OLDK

The story revolves around Keiko, an ordinary office worker, and the extreme situations of the tenants living in various apartments. Their lives become intricately entangled, leading to a series of highly unusual coincidences that eventually culminate in a chaotic uproar.

A Boy's Summer in 1945

Commencing well-respected Nippon director Kazuo Kuroki's sixth decade behind the camera, "A Boy's Summer in 1945" (literally "A Beautiful Summer in Kirishima") is a lyric, novelistic drama set in the countryside in the last days before Japan's surrender ending WWII. Striking a welcome retro note in its languid pacing and delicate handling of seriocomic ensemble threads, handsome production is a natural for fests. It might also prove a cornerstone for retrospectives or ancillary releases of works by a helmer ("Preparation of the Festival," "Ronin-gai") who's long been appreciated at home but has won just limited attention abroad.

Kawaki no machi

A hard-boiled story about a young man who wakes up to the ferocity within himself, swaying between violence and love as he walks a devastating path.

Door III

Miyako is a frustrated insurance saleswoman stuck in a major dry spell. She tries every trick in the book, including aggressive flirting, which gets her plenty of gropers but no buyers. One day while venturing down a narrow stairwell, she injures her ankle and happens upon Mitsuru who works for some mysterious foreign company. Decked out in high goth style -- complete with long inky black hair and mascaraed eyes -- Mitsuru cuts quite an odd figure, yet his seductive though menacing ways make him difficult for Miyako to resist. Escorting her to his office to treat her ankle, Miyako notices that his all-female staff seem more glassy-eyed and soul-deadened than the average office workers. In fact, they seem almost like zombies. Later, weird things start happening. Mitsuko finds vomit on her doorstep, she seems to be tailed by a shadowy woman in a red dress, and most strikingly, she finds herself utterly powerless against Mitsuru's advances.

Suit Yourself or Shoot Yourself: The Loot

Yûji and Kosaku are hired to track down an old man. But when he suddenly dies, his granddaughter surfaces with a map to his buried fortune, which the yakuza and a dirty cop are determined to find.

Moving

Physically separated from her father and at odds with her distraught mother, a girl must negotiate her own passage to maturity.

The Cherry Orchard

At an all-girls school, a group of girls prepare for a stage performance of Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard".