Sanjuro - Tsubaki Sanjûrô

For his final film, Akira Kurosawa paid tribute to the immensely popular writer and educator Hyakken Uchida, here played by Tatsuo Matsumura. Madadayo is composed of distinct episodes based on Uchida's writings that illustrate the affection and loyalty felt between Uchida and his students. Poignant and elegant, this is an unforgettable farewell from one of the greatest artists the cinema has ever known.

A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods. The film won the 1976 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the Golden Prize and the Prix FIPRESCI at the 9th Moscow International Film Festival and a number of other awards.

The unemployed samurai Sanjuro (stunning as usual: Toshiro Mifune) travels through 19th century Japan to a remote mountain village, where two hostile family clans fight for supremacy by all means. Sanjuro skillfully takes advantage of the rivalries, takes sides here and there and plays both groups against each other in his daring intrigue game.

A young executive hunts down his father's killer in director Akira Kurosawa's scathing The Bad Sleep Well. Continuing his legendary collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa combines elements of Hamlet and American film noir to chilling effect in exposing the corrupt boardrooms of postwar corporate Japan.

One of the most thrilling movie epics of all time, Seven Samurai tells the story of a sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire the eponymous warriors to protect them from invading bandits. This three-hour ride from Akira Kurosawa – featuring legendary actors Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura – seamlessly weaves philosophy and entertainment, delicate human emotions and relentless action, into a rich, evocative, and unforgettable tale of courage and hope.

Kanji Watanabe has worked in faithful service at a municipal complaints office and looks forward to retirement when he learns that he suffers from stomach cancer and has only a few months to live. The news makes him realize how much he has wasted his life on bureaucracy and how little his own son cares for him. Kanji Watanabe finally wants to enjoy his life as well as he can. He dives into the nightlife, drinks, plays, dances and realizes that all this makes him no less lonely. One day, Watanabe remembers some women from a poor neighborhood who had applied for a playground for their children. Now he wants to help realize the playground, and he fights against the resistance of that bureaucracy, which he himself has helped to shape throughout his life in order to give his life a meaning.

The Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky wanted to show a really good person in his well-known novel "The Idiot". Ironically, he chose an idiot. The Japanese Akira Kurosawa realized his obsession with the film adaptation of the book: The depiction of the necessary failure in an unjust society. It is an adaptation in the best sense, as the filmmaker transfers the material to the cold Japanese island of Hokkaido. The eponymous hero returns home after an absence and fails because his naivety prevents him from defending himself against the intrigues.

Rashomon is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made: Three men take shelter at one of the gates leading to Kyoto, waiting for the rain to stop. We are under the Heian era (9th - 12th centuries). To pass the time, they discuss an event that took place recently: the discovery of the body of a samurai, probably killed by the bandit Tajomaru. The three men were in fact called to testify at the trial. They each report what they said at the trial, and what they saw. Four versions are opposed, the widow - who was allegedly raped by the bandit - also having her own. So what happened?

Kurosawa's favourite actor of the early years was Toshiro Mifune. Here he plays the famous painter Ichiro Aoye, who spends his holidays in the mountains and meets the young singer Miyako Saijo. They live in the same hotel and spend some time together. Two reporters photograph them together and publish the pictures in a tabloid magazine - in revenge for Saijo's refusal to give them an interview. The scandal was there, and the painter's lawyer is bribed by the editor-in-chief of the magazine to get money for his seriously ill daughter. Kurosawa puts characters in situations in which it is difficult for them to make a decision. Akira Kurosawa: "After the war Japan experienced something new: freedom of the press. Of course, it was quickly abused. A relevant mass press thought it had to arouse readers' curiosity and trigger scandals with shamelessly vulgar articles. This tendency had to be stopped, that gave the impulse to my film."

He is still young, the actor who should become known around the world with masterpieces like "Rashomon" or "The Seven Samurai". Here, Akira Kurosawa has created a thriller against the background of the recent and completely unprocessed Japanese war past, of which many of the characters, whether woman or man, talk. "Stray Dog" plays during the sultry hot summer in Tokyo in 1949. The young and completely inexperienced inspector Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) gets his loaded service weapon stolen from his jacket pocket in an overcrowded bus. Murakami is beside himself. He fears the worst consequences for his still young career. Together with his older colleague Sato from the theft department, he sets out on a search for traces of the thief. While we roam about the Japanese post-war setting with him, he gains experiences and learns to keep calm from the old and experienced colleague Sato. Women who are involved in what is going on are also snarling at him as a greenhorn. An impressive milieu study by Akira Kurosawa, in which the master proves himself in the genre film and shows us what he is capable of in narrative, atmospheric and visual terms.

At the end of the war, doctor Fujisaki is wounded during an emergency operation in the hospital. A little later he notices that the patient is suffering from syphilis and that he has infected himself. Fearing to pass on the disease, he breaks up with his fiancée after the war and silently fights his illness with the means available at the time. His former patient, however, lives carelessly and marries; his deformed child is born dead. The "Arztfilm" was a popular genre in the post-war years, especially in Germany. Kurosawa, who had already focused on a doctor in Drunken Angel the year before, adapted a successful play here.

In this powerful early noir from the great Akira Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune bursts onto the screen as a volatile, tubercular criminal who strikes up an unlikely relationship with Takashi Shimura’s jaded physician. Set in and around the muddy swamps and back alleys of postwar Tokyo, Drunken Angel is an evocative, moody snapshot of a treacherous time and place, featuring one of the director’s most memorably violent climaxes.

Academy Award 2022: Best Foreign Language Film. - Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director, still unable, after two years, to cope with the loss of his beloved wife, accepts to direct Uncle Vanja at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There he meets Misaki, an introverted young woman, appointed to drive his car. In between rides, secrets from the past and heartfelt confessions will be unveiled.

After one of their shoplifting sessions, Osamu and his son come across a little girl in the freezing cold. At first reluctant to shelter the girl, Osamu’s wife agrees to take care of her after learning of the hardships she faces. Although the family is poor, barely making enough money to survive through petty crime, they seem to live happily together until an unforeseen incident reveals hidden secrets, testing the bonds that unite them.

In 1936 Tokyo, Sada Abe (Eiko Matsuda) is a former prostitute who now works as a maid in a hotel. The hotel's owner, Kichizo Ishida (Tatsuya Fuji), molests her, and the two begin an intense affair that consists of sexual experiments and various self-indulgences. Ishida leaves his wife to pursue his affair with Sada. Sada becomes increasingly possessive and jealous of Ishida, and Ishida more eager to please her. Their mutual obsession escalates to the point where Ishida finds she is most excited by strangling him during lovemaking, and he is killed in this fashion. Sada then severs his penis. While she is shown next to him naked, it is mentioned that she will walk around with his penis inside her for several days. Words written with blood can be read on his chest: "Sada Kichi the two of us forever". Opening the 1976 Quinzaine, Nagisa Ôshima’s widely-banned and barrier-breaking classic no doubt remains one of the most controversial films of all time. A provocative depiction of disturbing sexual obsession, and, equally, an incendiary (if overshadowed!) critique of Japanese society.

Would you choose your natural son, or the son you believed was yours after spending 6 years together? Kore-eda Hirokazu, the globally acclaimed director of "Nobody Knows", "Still Walking" and "I Wish", returns to the big screen with another family - a family thrown into torment after a phone call from the hospital where the son was born... Ryota has earned everything he has by his hard work, and believes nothing can stop him from pursuing his perfect life as a winner. Then one day, he and his wife, Midori, get an unexpected phone call from the hospital. Their 6-year-old son, Keita, is not 'their' son - the hospital gave them the wrong baby. Ryota is forced to make a life-changing decision, to choose between 'nature' and 'nurture.' Seeing Midori's devotion to Keita even after learning his origin, and communicating with the rough yet caring family that has raised his natural son for the last six years, Ryota also starts to question himself: has he really been a 'father' all these years....

The time is 1702. A young samurai, Aoki Sozaemon (Okada Junichi) has left his countryside hometown, and is now living in Edo (now Tokyo), in search of Kanazawa Jubei (Asano Tadanobu), the man who killed his father. He is living in a dilapidated tenement house, in the poor quarters of the city of Edo. His neighbors in the so-called "row houses" are all good, solid folk who can never even hope to rise out of the squalor of their surroundings. Sozaemon, the provincial samurai, becomes friends with a variety of characters including a habitual drunk, an unsuccessful would-be petty official, a ragman, a perky girl, a doctor, and a scrivener. As the relationships between the characters unfold we are led deeper in the blossoming love story of Sozaemon and the beautiful widow, Osae (Miyazawa Rie). Although he has never forgot his task to find his father's enemy and to succeed in his vengeance, being around Osae and her son, Sozaemon feels a warm feeling inside, which leads to doubts about the entire act of revenge. However, to walk away from the "revenge-act (ADAUCHI)", could actually bring his entire family down, not only without the reward from the Shogun, but also, as a samurai, to be unsuccessful on revenge would be an act of cowardice, and a disgrace to the entire family name. Sozaemon, still not being able to decide on if he should take the act of revenge, goes on with his everyday life, teaching the neighborhood children mathematics, reading and writing. He wonders whether he can ever enjoy life without the specter of revenge and swordplay. With the discovery of the rich meaningful life rather than the meaningless death of a warrior, Sozaemon, together with his strange friends at the tenement row house, decides to plot an act of the lifetime...

Tokyo, cherry blossom time. Like every day, Sentaro is standing in his tiny bakery when the elderly Tokue passes by. She wants to start as a temp. Sentaro reacts negatively - until he tries Tokue's "An", a traditional sweet bean paste. This is so indescribably good that the baker immediately throws all concerns overboard and hires the woman. Soon a friendship develops between Tokue and Sentaro, who both have a secret. And the business blossoms - because the "An" preparation is not just a job for Tokue. Rather, it shows her deep connection with nature and her respect for life...

The story follows the social intercourse between a cameraman, Masaya, with a visual impairment, and Misako who disconnects from the world.

Shigemori is a renowned lawyer who is to defend Misumi in court on a murder charge, who had already been on a trial for a homicide offense 30 years before. Since Misumi has already confessed to the new crime, everything seems clear. But then Mr. Shigemori begins to doubt his client's guilt... This film by internationally acclaimed director Kore-eda tells a moving story of a man who strives for truth while questioning his own faith in the law.

Four siblings live happily with their mother in a small apartment in Tokyo. The children all have different fathers and have never been to school. The very existence of three of them has been hidden from the landlord. One day, the mother leaves behind a little money and a note, charging her oldest boy to look after the others. And so begins the children's odyssey, a journey nobody knows. Though engulfed by the cruel fate of abandonment, the four children do their best to survive in their own little world, devising and following their own set of rules. When they are forced to engage with the world outside their cocooned universe, the fragile balance that has sustained them collapses. Their innocent longing for their mother, their wary fascination toward the outside world, their anxiety over their increasingly desperate situation, their inarticulate cries, their kindness to each other, their determination to survive on wits and courage.

Set in the 1960s, high school student Toru Watanabe loses his only friend Kizuki after he commits suicide. Toru, now looking for a new life, enters a university in Tokyo. By chance, Toru meets Kizuki's ex-girlfriend Naoko in the university. They grow close because they both share the same loss. As Toru and Naoko grow even closer, Naoko's sense of loss also grows. After Naoko's 20th birthday, she leaves for a sanitarium in Kyoto. Watanabe, devastated by the situation, meets pure-hearted Midori during the spring semester. Midori looks like a small animal that just came into the world ... Based on Haruki Murakami's novel of the same name.

On the subtropical Japanese island of Amami, traditions about nature remain eternal. During the full-moon night of traditional dances in August, 16-year-old Kaito discovers a dead body floating in the sea. His girlfriend Kyoko will attempt to help him understand this mysterious discovery. Together, Kaito and Kyoko will learn to become adults by experiencing the interwoven cycles of life, death and love.

Peaceful living and dying are a central theme in this masterpiece by the Japanese Shohei Imamura, a literary film adaptation in the mountain region of Narayama. In a small mountain village on the edge of a valley, all who have turned seventy must leave the community and climb a certain mountain to die. Anyone who defies tradition brings misfortune to his own family. Orin is 69 years old and is about to climb the mountain this winter. But first she has to make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finally finds a wife. With "Narayama Bushiko", the Japanese Shohei Imamura has created what is probably his most beautiful film, a moving story about primordial questions of existence, staged in a fantastically beautiful Japanese mountain landscape and a nature in which people are a natural component. This nature includes coming and going, and this is what the film is about; existence is created between the two poles. This magnificent work, which has received several awards, has been reissued in a new copy.

College student Asako falls in love at first sight with Baku after meeting at a photography exhibit. Romance sparks between the two but doesn't last long when Baku suddenly disappears from her life. Two years later, she spots a man that bears a striking resemblance to him. Even though it is only his physical similarities to Baku that attracted her to him, she doesn't say so and starts dating the soft-spoken young man called Ryohei.

TOKYO SONATA is a portrait of a seemingly ordinary Japanese family. The father who abruptly loses his job conceals the truth from his family; the eldest son in college hardly returns home; the youngest son furtively takes piano lessons without telling his parents; and the mother, who knows deep down that her role is to keep the family together, cannot find the will to do so. From the exterior, all is normal and the same. But somehow, a single, unforeseeable chasm has appeared within the family, only to spread ever so quietly and quickly to disintegrate them.

After his very touching Like Father, Like Son, Hirokazu Kore-eda tells once again the story of a complex family: The three sisters Sachi, Yoshino and Chika live together in Kamakura. They travel to the funeral of their father, who left the family 15 years ago, and meet their 13-year-old half-sister Suzu. With great sensitivity for each of the sisters, Kore-eda looks at family ties.

The Asuka region is the birthplace of Japan. Here, in ancient times, there were those who fulfilled their lives in the midst of waiting. Modern people, apparently having lost this sense of waiting, seem unable to feel grateful for the present, and cling to the illusion that all things will move constantly forward according to one’s own plan. In ancient times, there were three small mountains that people believed were inhabited by gods. They were Mt. Unebi, Mt. Miminashi, and Mt. Kagu, and they still stand. In that time, a powerful official used the mountains as a metaphor for a struggle inside his own heart. The mountains were an expression of human karma. Time has passed into the present. Takumi and Kayoko, inheriting the unfulfilled hopes of their grandparents, live out their lives. Their tale continues a story of the ages, representing the uncountable souls that have accumulated in this land.

A story of love and frailty, Air Doll takes the essence of what it means to be human and distills it down to its purest form in this bittersweet love story that smoothly intertwines fantasy and reality. In a shabby, rundown apartment in an old part of Tokyo, a bright beacon of purity shines into being one day. Silent and motionless, the air doll that belongs to quiet and retiring middle-aged Hideo (Itsuji Itao) has never been anything out of the ordinary. Each evening after work, he chats with her over the dinner table, bathes her and makes love to her before turning in for the night. However, after he leaves the house one day, the air doll begins to twitch and move, miraculously coming to life. Like a newborn marvelling at the wonder of the world, she is awestruck at the beauty of everything around her. Tottering about in her tiny maid's uniform, she ventures outside the apartment with childlike curiosity. As she wanders through the city, the air doll is enthralled, talking to anyone she finds and trying to comprehend her own ephemeral existence. Though her life is only a few hours old, it changes forever when she walks into a video store and falls helplessly in love with the clerk, Junichi (Arata).

The Hirayamas travel from their hometown of Onomichi to Tokyo to visit their adult children. But the younger generation make them feel more in the way than welcome. It also emerges that their son’s career as a doctor and their daughter’s as a hairdresser are nowhere near as successful as the couple were led to believe from afar. The only one who really makes an effort to spend time with them is their daughter-in-law, Noriko, the widow of the Hirayama’s son who went missing in the war. On the journey home, mother Hirayama is taken seriously ill and the couple have to make an unscheduled stop in Osaka, where another of their adult children lives. In a succinct, objective and non-judgemental manner, Yasujirō Ozu uses images which are as simple as they are magnificent to tell the story of family estrangement and the isolation inherent in modern society. Ozu himself considered Tōky ō Monogatari his "masterpiece" and the 1963 Retrospective of the Berlin International Film Festival, the "film-historical screenings", was dedicated to him. This is the international premiere of the digitally restored version made by Japanese production company Shochiku.

After a long and unsuccessful struggle to get pregnant, convinced by the discourse of an adoption association, Satoko and her husband decide to adopt a baby boy. A few years later, their parenthood is shaken by a threatening unknown girl, Hikari, who pretends to be the child's biological mother. Satoko decides to confront Hikari directly.

Japanese film director Hirokazu Kore-eda will compete in San Sebastián for the third time, following Wandarfuru raifu (After Life, 1998) and Hana yori mo naho (Hana, 2006). A family drama about grown children visiting their elderly parents, which unfolds over one summer day. The aging parents have lived in the family home for decades. Their son and daughter return for a rare family reunion, bringing their own families with them. They have gathered to commemorate the tragic death of the eldest son, who drowned in an accident fifteen years ago. Although the roomy house is as comforting and unchanging as the mother’s homemade feast, everyone in the family has subtly changed. This is a typical family, bonded by love as well as resentments and secrets. With a subtle balance of gentle humor and wistful sorrow, Kore-eda portrays just how precious and exactly how annoying family can be.

In this film director Yoji Yamada bows down before his teacher and role model. Yamada was assistant director on Yazujiro Ozu’s «Tokyo monogatari», a moving family portrait set after the Second World War. In his remake, Yamada has made very few departures from Ozu’s masterpiece in order to update the story of ageing couple Shukichi and Tomiko to present day Japan. Once again, the pair decides to leave their quiet lives in the country to pay a visit to their children and grandchildren in Tokyo. Once there, they discover that neither their oldest son, a doctor named Koichi, nor their eldest daughter Shigeko - who runs a beauty parlour - has time for them: both are too busy attending to their everyday concerns. Even the youngest son went his own way. The old couple feel lonely and bewildered in the fast-paced metropolis. Adopting Ozu’s quiet observations of the family, Yamada’s version loses nothing of its topicality and, even sixty years after the original was filmed, the generation gap is still palpable. In fact, today’s young people are struggling to assert themselves in a far more confusing world, and this in a country where the scars of the 2011 tsunami still inform everyday life.

Paul Schrader’s visually stunning, collage-like portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted an impossible harmony between self, art, and society. Taking place on Mishima’s last day, when he famously committed public seppuku, the film is punctuated by extended flashbacks to the writer’s life as well as by gloriously stylized evocations of his fictional works. With its rich cinematography by John Bailey, exquisite sets and costumes by Eiko Ishioka, and unforgettable, highly influential score by Philip Glass, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a tribute to its subject and a bold, investigative work of art in its own right.

Yumiko is a young woman from Osako, whose life is defined by the death of her loved ones. She lost her grandmother at the age of twelve, and her husband Ikuo, who is the reincarnation of her grandmother to her, commits suicide some months after the birth of their child. Once more Yumiko loses a person she had really loved. Five years later she marries Tamio, a man who lives by the sea together with his eight-year-old daughter from his first marriage. Her pain has ceased until the day she returns to her place of birth and gets caught up by her memories.

Makoto Shinjo, a teenager who is a little lost in search of experiences, sometimes agrees to take "little tricks" with strangers in the car. One day, she meets Kiyoshi Fujii, half student, half offender, who saves her from an overly enterprising motorist and takes money from her at the same time. Having become friends during a walk, Kiyoshi, listening only to his desire, raped her. However, Makoto decided to leave his parents to live with him. To live, they will practice the scam and blackmail to which the indelicate motorists who have been enticed by Makoto will be subjected. "It's the story of young people who only manage to express their anger in a deviant way. By showing the tragedy of these young people, I expressed my own anger at the situation facing the current youth." Nagisa Oshima

Five fates of women from Tokyo's brothel district in the 1950s are the focus of Kenji Mizoguchi's last film, who devoted the majority of his works to the historical and social situation of Japanese women. The theme is shaped by socio-critical commitment, human sympathy and unspeculative openness.

Twenty-seven-year-old Noriko lives with her widowed father, a university professor, in a small house in the tranquil surroundings of northern Kamakura. He is completing a scientific manuscript, aided by his assistant, Hattori. Professor Sonomiya is concerned for his daughter s welfare, and one day suggests she marry Hattori. Noriko only laughs at his suggestion because she is quite happy with her life and knows that Hattori is already engaged. Her aunt Masa, the professor s sister, is the next person to try out her matchmaking skills, and she talks Noriko into meeting Mr Satake. Although Noriko quite likes him, she rejects all thoughts of marriage because she doesn t want to leave her father all alone. When she meets Professor Onodera, an old friend of her father s, in a museum one day and he tells her that he has just remarried, Noriko can hardly disguise her dismay. One of Ozu's favorite themes is the opposing desires of and friction between members of a family even though they feel deep affection and loyalty to each other. Inevitably, these interactions within a family, and particularly the problems which arise between parents and children, will result in some sort of separation. For Noriko it is the separation of marriage, in other Ozu stories it may mean being employed away from home or death. While Ozu is saddened by these events, he also recognizes that they are unavoidable. This awareness of the inherent transience and sadness of human existence is what the Japanese call mono no aware." Beverley Bare Buehrer

Set in Edo-period Japan, the plot revolves around a young man, Toyoji, who has an affair with an older woman, Seki. Toyoji is very jealous of Seki's husband and decides that they should kill him. One night, after the husband has had plenty of shōchū to drink and is in bed, they strangle him and dump his body down a well. To avert any suspicions, Seki pretends her husband has gone off to Tokyo to work. For three years Seki and Toyoji secretly see each other. Their relationship has moments of intense passion, but the young man starts to distance himself from Seki. Finally, suspicions in the village become very strong and people begin to gossip. To make matters worse, her husband's ghost begins to haunt her and the law arrives to investigate her husband's disappearance.

A man wanders through the 20-kilometre exclusion zone around the stricken nuclear reactors at Fukushima. The cherry trees are in bloom and the natural surroundings make an idyllic impression. Radiation is invisible, yet a gaping emptiness looms where the tsunami engulfed streets and houses. The man is wearing normal clothing, just like the people still toughing it out here, for the time being at least. He occa- sionally encounters white "ghosts" in protective clothing, performing strange tasks. As in Tarkovsky’s STALKER, the zone in Fujiwara Toshi’s NO MAN’S ZONE is both a place and a mental state. A gradual disintegration began long before the destruction and devastation, a process defied for the most part by the old people our "Stalker" encounters. A voice accom- panies the filmmaker’s wanderings, that of Armenian-Canadian actress Arsinée Khanjian, a voice from a place of exile, unfamiliar and sympathetic. NO MAN’S ZONE is a complex reflection on the relationship between images and fears, on being addicted to the apocalypse, on the ravaged relationship between man and nature. For the zone to be decontam- inated and returned to the people, nature itself will have to undergo an amputation.

Seven years after the death of a close friend, three middle-aged men plan to arrange a marriage for the dead man’s daughter. But 24-year old Ayako doesn't really want to marry; she would rather continue taking care of her widowed mother. So the three men decide that the best course is to marry off the rather comely mother, Akiko, before the daughter … preferably to one of them. This plants seeds of estrangement between mother and daughter, and the latter begins to seriously consider one of the proposed marriage candidates … «Good grief, it's all very complicated,» we hear at the height of the comic-melancholy imbroglio. Director Yasujiro Ozu tells us the story in the simplest possible, yet artful, way, in images tinged with softness, both in color and language. Late Autum is the third to last film by the great Japanese director and only one of four color movies in his oeuvre. In honor of the 50th anniversary of his death and the year in which he would have turned 110, the original negatives have been used for digital restorations done in consultation with former members of Ozu's crew.

In his masterpiece Ugetsu monogatari the Japanese Kenji Mizoguchi tells the story of Genjuro, a potter, and his brother-in-law, the farmer Tobei. The two live with their wives in a small village in the middle of a war-torn area. And they have ambitions that take advantage of the turmoil of war. Genjuro wants to travel to the city with his pots and earn a lot of money as quickly as possible. Tobei wants to achieve fame and honor as a Samurai. Both risk everything - and lose. The pursuit of money and fame, Mizoguchi makes clear here, inevitably involves the loss of inner values. Genjuro and Tobei set out on a path that leads them further and further away from themselves, following their dreams and phantoms and not the traces of reality. On the way, on that grandiose boat passage, death drives past them like a phantom - they don't know how to interpret the sign correctly. And so death becomes reality. Genjuro later pursues a love that he considers to be more genuine and stronger than that of his own wife left at home. Love, however, turns out to be a phantom, the ghost of a long faded princess.

Shortly after assuming his post as food taster, Shinnojo loses his eyesight. The fish that was given to the head of the clan was poisoned. Prior to this, Shinnojo had held an inferior position in the ruler’s entourage. Realising that not only will he remain blind until the end of his days, but he must now relinquish his position and will need assistance for rest of his life, Shinnojo becomes dejected and melancholy. His wife, Kayo, is the only one able to prevent him from committing suicide: "I can’t imagine life without you. But, go ahead and kill yourself. If you do so, I will follow you immediately", is her response. Touched by her loyalty, Shinnojo gives up his plan to take his own life. Shortly afterwards, Shinnojo’s uncle advises him that, since he is no longer able to work, Shinnojo should ask Kayo to go to Shimada, the influential steward of the estate, and ask for his help. As time goes by, Shinnojo begins to get used to being blind. But then one day his aunt Ine tells him of a rumour she has heard about Kayo’s infidelity. Madly jealous, Shinnojo, who loves his wife and had always trusted her, orders his old servant, Tokuhei, to follow Kayo. Tokuhei discovers that the rumour is true. Having noticed that she was being watched, Kayo admits to having committed adultery with Shimada, explaining that the steward demanded her body in return for supporting Shinnojo. Throwing his wife out of the house, Shinnojo prepares himself for one last battle.

Sansho Dayu is a film about a couple of children from a rich house at the end of the 12th century who fall into the hands of the bailiff. He owes his reputation as an exemplary feudal lord to the merciless exploitation of his slave army. Mizoguchi fluently tells this old legend of need and revenge in beautiful pictures.

In the post-war Gion district of Kyoto, the geisha Miyoharu agrees to apprentice the 16 year-old Eiko, whose mother was a former geisha who had just died. After a year of training they have to find a large sum of money before Eiko can debut. Miyoharu borrows the money from the tea-house owner, Okimi, who in turn obtains the money from the businessman Kusuda. Kusuda fancies Eiko himself and wants to give Miyoharu to Kanzaki in order to close a large business deal. However both geishas have minds of their own and, going against tradition, want to be able to say no to clients.

Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses) is probably the most famous figure in the Japanese cinema of the 60s. He made his debut in 1959, exactly the same year as his French colleagues in the Nouvelle Vague, with his feature film Ai to Kibo no Machi (The Street of Love and Hope), only to double with Seishun Zankoku Monogatari (Naked Youth) a year later. In The Street of Love and Hope, Oshima tells the story of a boy who lives in poverty and has to sell his dove. It is also the story of a fraud. Because the dove returns and can be sold again and again. He sells the dove to a rich girl who starts to take an interest in him. An overcoming of the class differences seems possible. But the girl notices the fraud and is disappointed. She buys the dove again to kill her.

Seibei Iguchi (Hiroyuki Sanada), a low-ranking samurai and family man, leads a life without glory as a bureaucrat in the mid-XIX century Japan. A widower, he has charge of two daughters (whom he adores) and a senile mother; he must therefore work in the fields and accept piecework to make both ends meet. New prospects seem to open up when Tomoe (Rie Miyazama), his long-time love, divorces a brutal husband. However, even as the Japanese feudal system is unraveling, Seibei remains bound by the code of honour of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedences. The consequences are cruel.

Once amongst avid admirers of nuclear plants and their managers, Aunt Kuniko and her community are on the verge of disintegration in the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe. Director Kyoko Miyake, having lived outside of Japan for more than a decade, revisits Fukushima.

This haunting, kabuki-inflected version of a Japanese folk legend is set in a remote mountain village where food is scarce and tradition dictates that citizens who have reached their seventieth year must be carried to the summit of Mount Narayama and left there to die. The sacrificial elder at the center of the tale is Orin (Kinuyo Tanaka), a dignified and dutiful woman who spends her dwindling days securing the happiness of her loyal widowed son with a respectable new wife. Filmed almost entirely on cunningly designed studio sets, in brilliant color and widescreen, The Ballad of Narayama is a stylish and vividly formal work from Japan’s cinematic golden age, directed by the dynamic Keisuke Kinoshita.

Noriko, still single at the advanced age of 28, lives contentedly in an extended family household that includes her parents and her brother's family. An uncle's visit prompts the family to find her a husband.