After a long and unsuccessful struggle to get pregnant, Satoko and her husband decide to adopt a child. Over the next six years, the middle-class couple and their young son Asato settle into a comfortable, albeit routine, life. The family’s orderly existence is shattered by the arrival of Hikari, a young woman claiming to be Asato’s biological mother, demanding his return. As tensions mount, Satoko grows more and more emboldened to defend her family. Weaving together multiple timelines and genres…

In the last 30 years of his long life, reclusive artist Morikazu Kumagai (1880-1977), aka Mori, almost never left his Ikebukuro home. Instead, he took pleasure in a daily routine of observing the cats, fish, birds and insects living in his luxuriant garden for hours, eventually rendering them into his distinct paintings. Featuring a colorful cast headlined by screen legends Tsutomu Yamazaki (Tampopo) and Kirin Kiki (Still Walking), this delightful, offbeat comedy directed by Shuichi Okita (The Mohican Comes Home)…

In a small rural town where everyone knows each other, all boys have the same bowl haircuts known as the “Yoshino Cut,” a local tradition administered by the town’s proud (and sole) barber Mrs. Yoshino (Masako Motai). When a new kid with a cool haircut arrives from Tokyo and refuses to comply, however, four fifth-grader friends find their lives forever changed. A visually inventive debut feature that playfully considers conformity and tradition, director Naoko Ogigami gives special attention to the…

On the last day of term, a grieving middle school teacher (Takako Matsu) reveals that two of her students are responsible for the death of her four-year-old daughter, who was found drowned in the school swimming pool. She delivers a planned confession—a death knell detailing her carefully planned vengeance—that leaves the typically raucous classroom reeling and prompts the students’ psychological torment that follows. A dark and stylish odyssey of increasingly disquieting proportions, Nakashima’s lavishly shot, breathless thriller took Japan by…