Akihiko Shiota

A beautifully crafted and darkly comic exploration of innocence and perversity. Shiota gets a great deal of mileage out of the extreme contrast between the film's placid surface - that of a lightweight teen romance - and it's underlying themes of sexual degradation and control. (Viz Films)

Aoi Miyazaki (EUREKA) plays Sachiko, a thirteen year-old girl living with her depressed mother (ryo, DISTANCE). The film starts by showing her mother's suicide attempt, a scene that pretty much sets the tone, both content-wise and stylistically. (DVDBeaver.com)

A female warrior (Shibasaki) who was raised as a man joins a young samurai's quest to recover his body parts from demons and restore his dad's natural form. (imdb)

"Canary" is the troubling tale of a boy trying to survive after a terrible event involving his parents and a cult. After living several years among the cult with his mother and sister, he finds the cult suddenly in turmoil regarding the sarin gas train attacks in Tokyo. First taken to a councelling center, he then sets out with his only friend to find his sister and mother in Tokyo. (cdjapan.co.jp)

The Japanese title actually translates to something like "[a place] where [one] can still go back to". -- and reflects the essence of the film considerably better than the English one. This little film (74 minutes or so) It focuses on the lives of two 5th grade boys over the course of (part of) a school year. They make mischief, have to deal with family issues, neighborhood bullies and _girls_ and generally cope with issues of life, death and change. The presentation is unsentimental and honest.

In the town of Aso a boy returns to his mother after he was missing for 58 years. Inspector Kawada from the welfare ministry is sent to the town to investigate these strange occurence. Soon, more and more dead people are resurrected and return to their loved ones. (imdb)

We all have our regrets, but what if you found yourself back in the moment you most regret... "A Heartful Of Love" portrays a group of characters that return to such moments and find the chance to alter the past. (HKFlix)

Akihiko Shiota's deliciously perverse "Gips" charts the relationship between two women, the submissive stenographer Kazuko and the dominant Tamaki, who has interesting ways of enslaving members of both sexes. (VIFF)

A based-on-a-true-story romance tale between Masami (Nishikido), a charming taxi driver and Tsukasa (Kitagawa), a woman who's wheelchair-bound and suffers from memory impairments after a tragic accident.

When a successful, but tired Tokyo-based playwright who has sworn off easy women and casual encounters takes refuge in the countryside, his plans are disrupted by a horny woman who pedals fast into his life and is unrelenting.

Yumiko Haruno works as a waitress at a cafe that has been around for a long time. She spends her days aimlessly and without a dream for her future. On an ordinary day at her job, Yumiko notices middle aged man Ichirou Haga looking intently at shunga (Japanese erotic paintings that were popular during the Edo period). He suddenly talks to her and asks her what shunga is to her. (imdb)