Yu Uemura

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 psychological thriller set in the post-COVID Tokyo. The film follows a woman looking for her missing son, and a shady young man who approaches her, claiming to know her son.

Sayonara, Band Apart

A man who gave up on living in despair with society and himself. Mai, a high school girl, is involved in a confinement incident caused by the man. Mai's classmate, Ujiie, who caused a violent incident and lost her whereabouts. Set in a small port town a little far from the city center, a confinement incident triggers the gears of the three characters, depicting the moment when people with difficulties in life take a step forward.

Maika, a pregnant woman, is running along a farm road at night with nothing but her clothes on her back. Her beaten face is discolored, one eye is swollen, and she is bleeding from the edge of her mouth. The headlights of a car approaching from behind frightens Maika, and she loses her balance and falls. Just as she is about to get up, her cell phone rings. It's a call from Masayoshi, her abusive husband. Out of fear, Maika knocks the phone to the ground and breaks it. Slowly, she picks herself up and continues walking down the street at night. She arrives at a love hotel hidden in the suburbs of a provincial city.

A socially-distanced college reunion, an unusual rapport struck between a food delivery man and a patron, a bus-stop encounter, and a blind woman scammed into thinking her brother is sick constitute the stories of Mayu Nakamura’s COVID-era quadriptych—a work that encapsulates the newfound anxieties of loneliness, insecurity and the struggle for connection within the depths of the pandemic lockdown. Tied together by the remarkable performances of actress Nahana, who embodies the various female characters across the film’s differing narratives, Nakamura’s episodic feature delves into the lives of women in COVID-era Japan, finding profundity and human connection amid the unlikely encounters of strangers.

A British comedy in Japanese clothes, with central character Ginji at once earnest farm boy and entrepreneurial savant, finding ingenious and entertaining solutions in a timeless tale of business and found family.

A coming-of-age film depicts the love and friendship of high school students in the 1970s who are passionate about filmmaking.

The "first penguin" is the courageous first penguin that dives into the sea filled with enemies. Iwasaki Nodoka is a young single mother with no money, no house, and no work. While Nodoka decides that she will do anything to eat, she meets a fisherman who offers her "10,000 yen to rebuild the coast". Thus, Nodoka now carries the dreams of the local fishermen whose lives are on her shoulders. Despite her limited knowledge of the fishing industry, Nodoka does her best working with the stubborn sea men, breaks through the old common sense and customs with her boldness, and creates a revolution in the industry.