Hirokazu Koreeda
1) Shoplifters
Language
日本語
Appears on list
Description
"On the margins of Tokyo, a dysfunctional band of outsiders are united by fierce loyalty, a penchant for petty theft, and playful grifting. When the young son is arrested, secrets are exposed that upend their tenuous, below-the-radar existence and test their quietly radical belief that it is love--not blood--that defines a family"--Container.
Series
Language
日本語
Description
Dwelling on his past glory as a prize-winning author, Ryota wastes the money he makes as a private detective on gambling and can barely pay child support. After the death of his father, his aging mother and beautiful ex-wife seem to be moving on with their lives. Renewing contact with his initially distrusting family, Ryota struggles to take back control of his existence and to find a lasting place in the life of his young son.
Language
日本語
Description
Affluent architects Ryota and his wife Midori face a terrible dilemma when they learn that their six-year-old son, Keita, was accidentally switched at birth and is not their biological child. In the wake of this revelation, Ryota's sense of fatherhood is shaken to the core as he witnesses both his wife's enduring devotion to Keita and his own conflicting feelings of nature versus nurture. Now his decision on which boy is truly his son will change...
Language
日本語
Description
In Kore-eda's thought-provoking vision, the newly deceased find themselves in a way station somewhere between Heaven and Earth. With the help of dedicated caseworkers, each soul is given three days to choose one cherished memory for their life that they will relive for eternity. As the film reveals, recognizing happiness and finding a life's worth of meaning in a single event is no simple task.
6) After life
Series
Language
日本語
Appears on list
Description
Hirokazu Kore-eda's revelatory international breakthrough is a bittersweet fantasia in which the recently deceased find themselves in a limbo realm where they must select a single cherished moment from their life.
Language
日本語
Description
Three sisters, Sachi, Yoshino and Chika, live together in the city of Kamakura, Japan. When their father, absent from the family home for the last fifteen years, dies, they travel to the countryside for his funeral and meet their shy, teenage half sister. Bonding quickly with the orphaned Suzu, they invite her to live with them. Suzu eagerly agrees and a new life of joyful discovery begins for the four siblings.
Series
Language
日本語
Description
Leading attorney Shigemori takes on the defense of murder-robbery suspect Misumi who served jail time for another murder 30 years ago. Shigemori's chances of winning the case seem low; his client freely admits his guilt, despite facing the death penalty if he is convicted. As he digs deeper into the case, as he hears the testimonies of the victim's family and Misumi himself, the once confident Shigemori begins to doubt whether his client is the murderer...
9) I wish
Author
Language
日本語
Description
Separated from his father and younger brother by his parents' divorce, twelve-year-old Koichi puts all his hope in the tale that if two people make the same wish while watching two trains pass each other, the wish will come true and his family will be together again.
10) Maborosi
Language
日本語
Description
Haunted by the mysterious loss of her grandmother many years before, a beautiful young mother (Makiko Esumi as Yumiko) struggles to come to terms with the sudden loss of her husband. Yumiko remarries and with her young son moves to her new husband's home in a remote village on the wild, untamed Sea of Japan. There, with time, she awakens to find love, understanding, happiness and a sense of peace.
11) I wish
Language
日本語
Description
Twelve-year-old Koichi, separated from his brother Ryunosuke due to his parents' divorce, begins to believe that Japan's new bullet train service will create a miracle when the first trains pass each other at top speed, and enlists a group of friends on an improbable mission.
13) Monster
Language
日本語
Description
After a mother discovers that a teacher's bullying is behind her young son's sudden strange behavior, she storms into his school demanding an explanation. Continually left without satisfactory answers and with an increasingly distressed child, she furiously escalated her concerns to the school board and the media. But as the story unfolds through the multilayered perspectives of mother, teacher, and child, the real truth gradually emerges and proves...
Series
Criterion collection volume 554
Language
日本語
Description
Every year, the Yokoyama clan gets together to honor the life of eldest son Junpei, drowned 15 years earlier while saving a man from drowning. Retired physician father Shohei still mourns, while his wife Toshiko has become a passive-aggressive domestic goddess, the two bicker continually. Surviving son Ryota has married at last-his new wife Yukari is a widow with a young son. Daughter Chinami and her car-salesman husband have their two kids in tow....
15) Maborosi
Series
Language
日本語
Description
Yumiko is a vibrant and happy young wife and mother who is haunted by the childhood memory of watching her grandmother walk away from the family home, never to be seen again. When her husband dies a mysterious suicide, Yumiko is devastated by shock and grief. She struggles to care for her toddler son in the couple's cramped Osaka apartment.
16) Air doll
Language
日本語
Description
Surreal Japanese drama about a latex doll which becomes human. Hideo (Itsuji Itao) lavishes affection upon his doll, Nozomi (Doona Bae), and seems to appreciate her silently passive nature. Unbeknownst to him, however, one day Nozomi comes to life and sets out in search of human experience. On her wanderings she happens upon a video rental store, where she meets Junichi (Arata). As an emotional bond forms between the pair, Nozomi is gradually introduced...