Hiroshi Akutagawa

This film follows the daily lives of a group of people barely scraping by in a slum on the outskirts of Tokyo. Yet as desperate as their circumstances are, each of them—the homeless father and son envisioning their dream house; the young woman abused by her uncle; ...  (more)

In the summer of 1941, the United States and Japan seem on the brink of war after constant embargos and failed diplomacy come to no end. "Tora! Tora! Tora!", named after the code words use by the lead Japanese pilot to indicate they had surprised the Americans, ...  (more)

Saburo and Keiko fall in love with each other but the tide of war separates them.  (more)

Gosho’s most celebrated film both in Japan and the West, Where Chimneys Are Seen is perhaps the most compelling example of his concern for, and insights into, the everyday lives of lower-middle-class people. Based on Rinzo Shiina’s novel of the absurd, the film ...  (more)

A young woman, who must support her father as a middle-aged man's mistress, finds herself falling in love with a student closer to her age.  (more)

A Japanese woman writes down three stories she has witnessed or heard of in her diary, each about the difficult situation a young woman finds herself in.  (more)

An outlaw pushes the residents of Edo's red light district to rebel against a growing number of stifling, moralistic laws.  (more)

Uninvited guests crash a former student radical's wedding and accuse him, his bride and other guests of ignoring their political commitments.  (more)

A traditional bar mistress in Kyoto clashes with her Tokyo rival.  (more)

This anthology film consists of nine incidents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when assassins changed the course of Japanese history.  (more)

In this Japanese drama, a village girl goes to Tokyo and becomes a hooker to support her ailing mother. While there she meets an unmarried teacher (at least he says he's unmarried) and falls in love. When she learns that he lied and is married to a woman whose ...  (more)

This is the sequel to Jose Torres (1959), the portrayal of Puerto Rican boxer Jose Torres, who won a silver medal in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. We follow Torres from his training in preparation to challenge world lightweight champion Willie Pastrano, to the match ...  (more)

Directed by Yoshiro Kawazu  (more)

The story of a novelist whose wife is confined in a mental hospital. His love for her drives him to write about her, though he runs into trouble when her parents accuse him of cashing in on her misfortune.  (more)

The story of Muhōmatsu, a rickshaw man who becomes a surrogate father to the child of a recently widowed woman.  (more)

Aldin, a vagabond water vendor, embarks of a series of fantastical and tragic misadventures through the Middle East in search of love, fortune, and power.  (more)

One Sunday morning, Toshio Esaki, a young dentist, wakes up in his clinic. It seems that he was drunk and spent the night in the clinic instead of going home. When he goes into the laboratory to get a drink of water, he finds a woman wearing a green striped ...  (more)