Betrayed and disgraced, big-city reporter Kazuya Mizuno is banished to a desk at Kaname's boring little town newspaper. But Kaname isn't as boring as it seems on the surface. Not with characters around like Shimeko, a girl genius with a childlike lack of propriety, and her ace fisherman/folk-singer dad. Or the overbearing and unpleasant local Shinto priest, a former Christian cultist. Or Endo, Kazuya's new colleague, a bitter drunk after his son's suicide. Or Kin, a former terrorist, now a hermit on his boat engaging in secret "research." Or perhaps most importantly Teruko, the hypnotically beautiful bar owner, the focus of all manner of innuendo and intrigue. Something mysterious, even mystical, is going on Kaname, and hapless Kazuya is about to be thrown into the middle of it.
A middle-class corporate couple doesn't worry about money and living expenses until the recession drains their finances.
Five loosely connected storylines concerning the secrets and lies, the fears and tears, and the puerile potty jokes that punctuate the characters' daily (and in one eerie case, nightly) encounters.
Two girls named Nana meet on a train to Tokyo. Nana K. aims to reunite with her boyfriend and Nana O. hopes to make it big in the music business. Despite their differences, the pair hit it off and become roommates.
A woman travels to Nagoya to meet her boyfriend who works there. She is disheartened to learn that he is seeing a new girl. However, she decides to stay a few more days, in a guesthouse at a dead end. Based on Yoshimoto Banana’s novel.
Overburdened and stuck in a greying marriage, Giovanna takes to caring for a Jewish Holocaust survivor her husband brings home. As she begins to reflect on her life, she turns to the man who lives across from her.
As young children, half-siblings Axel and Yanne are adopted to Norway. They are separated on arrival, him to material wealth on Oslo's west side, her to an average family on the east side. In contrast to her younger brother, Yanne remembers their journey to Norway, but she has no idea where he might be now.
In the summer of 1983, a 17-year-old Elio spends his days in his family's villa in Italy. One day Oliver, a graduate student, arrives to assist Elio's father, a professor of Greco-Roman culture. Soon, Elio and Oliver discover a summer that will alter their lives forever.
A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality.
Late one evening Alex suddenly abandons his girlfriend, Simone, to pursue the beautiful Aimee. In his encounter with Aimee time and place dissolve for him and he becomes a stranger to Simone, to whom he cannot return.
Two middle aged German brothers - one New Age and recently divorced, the other uptight and sceptical - travel to a Zen monastery in Japan in search of enlightenment, or perhaps just in search of themselves.
Catarina comes across a traveling circus and meets Aaqil. She must uncover the truth and avoid doom flags!
Young lovers Sailor and Lula hit the road to start a new life together away from the wrath of Lula’s deranged, disapproving mother, who has hired a team of hitmen to cut the lovers’ surreal honeymoon short.
The Bastard and the Beautiful World is an omnibus film consisting of four episodes. Fujiko is running as fast as she can, being chased after by a creepy masked man called Mad Dog. They meet a talented pianist on the way. A mysterious relationship develops between Utagui, a little girl who eats songs to live and an artist who can't sing anymore. A married couple sets off on a journey to find the right arm of their dead son. As they finally reach a beach in Okinawa, they find? Bastards come together on a night dancefloor for a show.
Bungalow 21
Left broke and homeless by his wealthy parents' divorce, a young man moves in with an old friend and finally meets the woman of his dreams -- only to discover she's already dating his friend.
Poor countryside girl Elza has been unsuccessfully looking for a job in Riga before she gets help from an acquantance. After that, fortune seems to turn and rich aged factory owner Ķikulis wants to marry Elza. Reluctant at first, she finally agrees but the marriage doesn't go smoothly.
A grieving mother who suffered the tragic loss of her daughter must decide if she can provide a loving home to a child who's lost her parents.
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
Manhattan explores how the life of a middle-aged television writer dating a teenage girl is further complicated when he falls in love with his best friend's mistress.