Scraping by in the Tokyo streets.
When his father flees from debt, carefree college student Osamu sees his life turn upside-down. Expelled from school and evicted from his apartment, he becomes one of Japan’s many ‘net cafe refugees’, barely scraping by each day with temporary and part-time work. Even though he’s still in Tokyo, his circumstances drive him to see and experience his home city in new ways. Trying to survive, Osamu gradually acquaints himself with the ‘invisible’ spaces occupied by the wanderers and homeless of Tokyo… people just like himself.
Shu Tokieda
Akane Hojo
Rui
Junya
Kojiro
Atsushi Kodama
Suzumoto
Karube
Shun
Serizawa
Naganuma
Mori
Araki
Police Officer
Kobayakawa
Police Officer
24 Jan 2020
It was a pre-destined love and marriage for Sonoko and Tetsuo. They tied the knot and became husband and wife no questions asked. All is well then. Well, perhaps not. Each holds a secret that even the binds of matrimony cannot untie.
26 Oct 2006
Tragedy strikes a married couple vacationing in the Moroccan desert, which jumpstarts an interlocking story involving four different families.
05 Sep 2022
After getting laid off, young single-mom Beth finds herself living in her car and struggles to hide her homelessness from her estranged brother Ben.
26 Apr 2012
When a precious little girl dies tragically of a rare heart condition, her grieving parents are left to pick up the pieces of their once perfect life. In a sequence of events influenced by faith (and perhaps miracles), they are guided to a homeless girl on the streets, and a battle ensues to reunite as a family and heal their broken hearts.
03 Jun 2006
In order to avoid a jail sentence, Sean Boswell heads to Tokyo to live with his military father. In a low-rent section of the city, Sean gets caught up in the underground world of drift racing
02 Mar 2024
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.
07 Dec 2006
Anna Tsuchiya blasts back in time playing an oiran, a top-notched geisha of the Edo period’s Yoshiwara District, navigating brothel politics while trying to cling to the man she loves.
29 Jan 1956
A young Tokyo salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair.
Charlie Davis is a young woman recently released from a Minnesota psychiatric ward following a suicide attempt. After a move across the country to Tucson, Charlie tries to piece her life back together among a band of artists and musicians while dealing with the trauma of childhood abuse, self-harm, and homelessness. A toxic relationship with a local musician and the reappearance of a friend from the psych ward threaten the delicate life she’s putting together.
09 Oct 1993
At Kichijōji Station, Tokyo, Taku Morisaki glimpses a familiar woman on the platform opposite boarding a train. Later, her photo falls from a shelf as he exits his apartment before flying to Kōchi Prefecture. Picking it up, he looks at it briefly before leaving. As the aeroplane takes off, he narrates the events that brought her into his life...
16 May 2025
Laid off due to the viral illness sweeping the globe, Byron is barely holding his life together. With eviction looming and his marriage crumbling, he takes a job as a midnight courier at a pandemic hotel for the unhoused, hoping to scrape together enough cash to keep his family afloat.
05 Dec 1981
True story of Tom Butterfield and his crusade to provide family life for homeless children, becoming not only the first bachelor caretaker, but the youngest single adult to become a legal foster parent in the state of Missouri.
27 Sep 2008
A young boy takes interest in piano while his family begins to disintegrate around him after his father loses his job.
16 Aug 2008
Three distinct tales unfold in the bustling city of Tokyo. Merde, a bizarre sewer-dweller, emerges from a manhole and begins terrorizing pedestrians. After his arrest, he stands trial and lashes out at a hostile courtroom. A man who has resigned himself to a life of solitude reconsiders after meeting a charming pizza delivery woman. And finally, a happy young couple find themselves undergoing a series of frightening metamorphoses.
10 Dec 2008
A near-penniless drifter's journey to Alaska in search of work is interrupted when she loses her dog while attempting to shoplift food for it.
26 Oct 2021
'M' is an old woman who lives adrift: a lonely shadow that crosses her own geography every day. She spends her days dreaming about her past, until one day she finds something very similar to her - an ant. M decides to share her world haunted by nostalgic memories and a dark presence, until the day a "mechanical angel" arrives to help her...
07 Aug 2004
In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.
28 Mar 2015
A little girl attempts to escape the rigors and misfortunes of the ghetto through the power of her mystical imagination while simultaneously trying to protect the bond with her addict mother.
07 Jun 1963
A modern geisha travels through Japan trying to find a job as entertainer, and ends up by finding love and a job as ama, a pearl diver.
18 Sep 2020
Searching for escape in Tokyo's back alleys, a haunted English teacher explores love and lust with a dashing Yakuza, as their tumultuous affair takes her on a journey through the city's dive bars and three-hour love hotels.