Kôsuke Mukai

Tsuboi and Kinoshita have just arrived at a desolate town. Both of them are amateur filmmakers. Tsuboi is a screenwriter and Kinoshita a director. They have come to this town because Funaki, an actor, has tempted them to come here, but he has yet to arrive. Tsuboi and Kinoshita start wandering around the town and happen to meet a young woman, Atsuko. The three of them go on a journey together and become friends. But one day, Atsuko disappears... (asianwiki.com)

A music group of girls need to learn to play a song before the school festival. (imdb)

Based on a novel by one of Japan's greatest writers, Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Laconic thirteen-year-old piano prodigy Uta has been in a detached slump ever since her father disappeared. With her mother struggling to make ends meet, Uta was forced to leave her old house and piano behind - ..the only piano she wants to play. Much to her mother's dismay, she keeps skipping her piano lessons, distancing herself even more from the people and places around her. She starts to open up when she meets 19-year-old aspiring pianist Wao, with whom she develops an unlikely friend (avistaz.com)

Daisuke Sakai (Hiroshi Yamamoto) and his girlfriend Hisako Shimada (Tomoko Kotera) have failed at selling a smelly health drink named Akajiru in Tokyo, amassing five million yen in debts. In order to recover financially, they retreat to Daisuke's island home town. Then, when things still fail to go as planned, the pair resort to extreme measures... (ICA)

You could think of My Back Page as a (very different) companion piece to United Red Army. It's based on a reputedly autobiographical novel by Kawamoto Saburo about his days as a rookie journalist from 1969 to 1972 and specifically about his closeness to a highly charismatic radical activist who preaches violent revolution. (Tony Rayns, Vancouver Film Festival site)

Based on the award-winning novel of the same name, this boldly erotic yet movingly tender portrait of a group of vulnerable, variously wounded people -- a depressed housewife, her high-school-aged lover, and his best friend, who is struggling to provide for himself and his senile grandmother -- whose intersecting lives yield both sorrow and a fragile, yet enduring, hope for a brighter future. (tiff.net)

A romantic drama about a stepbrother and sister living together with their parents. Their feelings for each other might be a little too much for society (and them) to handle. Another gemstone from one of Japan's most promising and subtle, young filmmakers. Cream Lemon is based on the same-named anime of the Hentai genre. (AsianWiki)

Tsutomu meets Kee outside a Pachinko hall. The two strike up an unlikely friendship. (imdb)

Tamako graduated from a university in Tokyo, but she now lives with her father back in Kofu. Tamako doesn't help her father or tries to get a job. She spends her time just eating and sleeping throughout the four seasons of the year. (imdb)

Kiyoshi Imawano and his family move into a haunted house. The entire family, except the occult-obsessed father, gains the power to see ghosts and spirits. An undead monk, secret government agents, even UFOs start showing up. It's up to Kiyoshi to find out why the house is troubled by all these strange occurrences and save his family, and possibly the world, from inter-dimensional terrors. (imdb)

Magazine reporter TANAKA is granted request to investigate a year old murder case gone cold, where a "perfect" family - a successful businessman, his beautiful wife and adorable child - were brutally murdered. Tanaka interviews acquaintances of the dead but gradually finds out that the family was not exactly ideal as believed, as stories of their true nature unfold. Equally disturbing are the interviewees themselves, each letting loose their own hidden nature. (imdb)

A salesman named Kosuke Okuda happens to meet Mao Watarai, a friend from his middle school days. Back then, Mao was bullied, but now she is an attractive woman. Kosuke and Mao fall in love and decide to marry, but Mao has a secret. (imdb)

Set in the year 1974, Jun is a dopey teenager, who attends an all-boys Buddhist high school. Jun doesn't care much about the curriculum and thinks more about his hero Bob Dylan and meeting girls. (asianwiki.com)

Tomoyo Shiino is an office lady. One day, she watches the news on TV and learns that her friend Mariko Ikagawa killed herself. They graduated from the same high school and Tomoyo knows that Mariko was abused by her father for a long time. To save her soul, Tomoyo steals her remains from Mariko's family. While recalling memories with Mariko, she goes on a trip with her remains.

Rie, devestated by a marriage breakup, is chatted up in her (?) store by a total stranger. She falls for him and he for her. She is happily (re)married for 3 odd years, having his daughter, her preteen son likes "dad" as well. One day hubby is killed in an accident. When a relative comes to mourn it's discovered that dead hubby is a complete unknown. She hires a lawyer to solve the mystery. The lawyer is dedicated but has identity problems of his own. (me)