Almost Hopeless

The picture belongs to the jidai gekki (historic) genre. It is a powerful story of violence and eroticism, picturing a world at once sordid and poetic, with two central themes which intermingle to compound an admirable panel of a critical period in Japanese history: the great famine in the mid 19th Century.

Yukiko Nogami is rescued during a mountain blizzard by handsome forester Shinkichi, and the two subsequently fall in love. But when Shinkichi dies in an avalanche, Yukiko leaves the mountains in despair and takes a job in a bar where she becomes deeply involved in the personal lives of several of the patrons. One day she thinks she sees Shinkichi alive, but it turns out to be a gangster named Hayakawa, a man on the run who bears an astonishing resemblance to Yukiko's lost love. Against her better judgment, she is drawn to help Hayakawa, though clearly danger follows him.

The slightly self-indulgent artist Thorvald collapses during an interview made in celebration of his 80th birthday and dies shortly after. But in spite of his death Thorvald can still follow those left behind. From a distance, and for better or worse, he sees with his own eyes the imprint he has left on his family and especially his son Vincent, who had a strained relationship with his father.

Coach Shimamura of the hapless Sparrows baseball team is pleased to obtain a hot new pitcher named Onishi. But when Onishi begins a romantic relationship with the coach's daughter Michiko, Shimamura becomes angry with the young man, lashing out at him when he disobeys instructions during a game. In turn, Michiko becomes angry with her father, who becomes increasingly depressed. When a tragedy strikes the family, Coach Shimamura begins losing control of his life, just when his family and his team need him most.

Set 3 years after the drama series. Kitano Yuichiro comes to give a lecture in the town where divorcee Sasamoto Sawa now lives quietly. The two meet again and their love story continue.

Explores the story of three children who claimed to have witnessed visitations of the Virgin Mary in Fatima, 1917. It shows the journey that they went on and how their courage and belief changed the face of Portugal.

Enrique buys a color television set just to satisfy a personal pleasure long time deferred but, from that moment on, he becomes obsessed with it in such way that eventually he is incapable to differ reality from fiction.

Short documentary about a transexual sex worker.

A boy in Russia, circa 1900, makes a daunting trip from his home village to a school in the city.

Yakuza boss Furuya leans more and more on his protege Takao Shoji, though Shoji has become romantically involved with Furuya's mistress, Natsue. Furuya himself has fallen in love, with a nurse after his recent hospital stay. As the gang grows more jealous of the favoritism Furuya shows Shoji, they decide to reveal Shoji's relationship with Natsue. But Furuya's affection for Shoji cannot be easily destroyed, even in the gang war that erupts.

Kikumori runs a cabaret on the docks, while his friend Kaji operates transport boats. When a gang of drug dealers tries to force the pair to cooperate in a smuggling scheme, conflict arises between the two friends. Falsely blamed for murder, Kikumori is blackmailed into an attempt to sabotage Kaji's boats and kill him. But the friendship between the two men proves an obstacle to the gangleader's plans.

A skilled country doctor's talents are such that he can even perform operations as difficult and novel as removing a patient's kidney for the first time in Japan. Unfortunately for him, however, his wife's addiction to gambling is of such a magnitude that he is down to selling his underwear to make money. The image sticks and he becomes known as the 'underwear doctor.' On the other hand, his successful surgery's patient is so grateful he himself wants to become a physician.

In an economically struggling small town, Jenny, a young married woman, begins an affair with June, her college-bound, African-American neighbor.

Films with a work theme, which still proclaimed that work should be the first need of man, underwent only a gradual development. The clash of stagnant, fearful thinking with innovative methods, albeit in a significantly modified form, is nevertheless preserved. In this case, we find ourselves in a machine tool factory, where manual labor is to be replaced by robotic equipment. This provides a rare chance to see this forgotten film, which the audience completely ignored - at the time of its creation, it was seen by about a thousand people.

A Outra Face do Homem