
Princess from the Moon
Two poor, married farmers have recently lost their only child; after a freak visitation, they pry open an alien cocoon to greet their new daughter.

The Makioka Sisters
This sensuously beautiful film chronicles the activities of four sisters who gather in Kyoto every year to view the cherry blossoms. It paints a vivid portrait of the pre-war lifestyle…

Koto: The Ancient City
Chieko (Momoe Yamaguchi) has been raised as the only child of parents who run a dry goods store. When Chieko was a middle-school student, she learned that her parents are…

Island of Hell
A scruffy detective investigates the murders of three sisters on a small Japanese island in 1946.

Lullaby to Kill
Kôsuke Kindaichi, a somewhat peculiar private detective, visits a remote town. He meets a police detective and they start to investigate an old unsolved murder. Then some murders happen. Kindaichi…

The Inugami Family
When a tycoon passes away, he unexpectedly leaves the family fortune to outsider Tamayo on the condition that she marries one of the grandsons, pitting blood against blood.

I Am a Cat
Nakadai is an English teacher at a local school. He’s put-upon like the patron figure of dozens of films and televisions shows. Viewers who are especially fans of Nakadai will…

Visions of Eight
Eight acclaimed filmmakers bring their unique and differing perspectives to the 1972 Summer Olympic Games held in Munich. The segments include Lelouch’s take on Olympic losers and their struggle to…

The Wanderers
Follows the fluctuating fortunes of three ronin in feudal Japan who wander from castle to castle, selling their services to whichever lord will fill their rice bowls. Though they use…

The Tale of Genji
An eroticized adaptation of Murasaki Shikibu’s classic novel, written over 1000 years ago. Genji, the son of the emperor, has gained renown among the nobility of Kyoto for his charm…

Tokyo Olympiad
This impressionistic portrait of the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympics pays as much attention to the crowds and workers as it does to the actual competitive events. Highlights include an epic…

An Actor’s Revenge
In Edo Japan, a kabuki actor seeks revenge against the three men who drove his parents to their deaths years ago.

Alone Across the Pacific
Kenichi Horie is determined to challenge his family, the law and the nature crossing the Pacific to America in a small sailboat. Despite his careful planning, many unforeseen events will…

The Broken Commandment
Ushimatsu’s father told him never to reveal his lower-caste heritage; years later, he now contemplates confiding in an activist fighting against such discrimination.

Bonchi
Kikuji is the scion of an Osaka merchant family whose traditional power is matrilineal. Instructed by his overbearing mother and grandmother to give them an heiress for the family business,…

Fires on the Plain
In the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier afflicted with tuberculosis is abandoned by his company and left to wander the Philippine island of Leyte.

Bridge of Japan
Ichikawa’s 1956 adaptation of Nihonbashi was the first to take the work of Kyoka Izumi— until then regarded as a writer of common tragic melodramas—and re-evaluate it as a tanbi-ha…

The Burmese Harp
In Burma during the closing days of WWII, a Japanese soldier separated from his unit disguises himself as a Buddhist monk to escape imprisonment as a POW.

365 Nights
A young man rents an apartment in Tokyo and discover it was built by his father. He falls in love with the daughter of the mistress of the house and…



