This haunting, erotic, and unforgettable psychological drama is a strange take on the Sisyphus myth. When an entomologist misses the last bus home from exploring a series of sand dunes, he is taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village and suffers extreme psychological and sexual torture alongside a young widow and forced dig the sand that they sell to nearby cities for construction.
Read MoreGenre: Drama
This fun twist on the classic buddy comedy starts with Chisato and Mahilo — two high school girls who happen to both be highly skilled assassins — becoming roommates. The relationship between the pair quickly turns sour. However, when they find themselves targeted by the yakuza, the girls quickly realise that they will have to find a way to work together.
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A soft-spoken but strong willed animator gets her big break, but must compete with a legendary animator returning to the business for a Saturday primetime spot in this new live action comedy/drama about Japan’s anime industry. When the young animator challenges her hero-turned-rival on stage at an anime convention, the two production teams each set out to outdo one another, because there can only be one number-one!
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Veteran animator Takayuki Hirao’s new film isa rollicking, exuberant ode to the power of the movies, and the joys and heartbreak of the creative process, as a new director and his team devote their lives to the pursuit of a “masterpiece.” Pompo is a talented and gutsy producer in “Nyallywood,” the movie-making capital of the world. Although she’s known for B-movies, one day Pompo tells her movie-loving but apprehensive assistant Gene that he will direct her next script. But when the production heads towards chaos, can Gene rise to Pompo’s challenge, and succeed as a first-time director?
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In his feature-length debut, Ephraim Asili drew inspiration from his own life experience as a member of the radical Black group MOVE to direct an impressive ensemble piece almost entirely set in a house in West Philadelphia. Described alternately as a “speculative re-enactment”, or as an experimental hybrid genre, that blends scripted drama with archive news footage, voice-overs, and interviews, The Inheritance could not be a timelier work to reflect with intelligence and heart on building radical grass-roots political movements. MOVE was the victim of a notorious and tragic police bombing in 1985.
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Directed & Written by: Luis Argueta, Justo Chang; The Silence of Neto is set in the six months that followed the CIA-staged coup that overthrew Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán in 1954. As a nation loses its innocence, an asthmatic 12-year-old boy, Neto Yepes (Óscar Javier Almengor) begins to discover his identity and sexuality while navigating love and death.
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This fantastic new Japanese crime thriller follows Masaya a university students who receives letters from a serial killer he knew from childhood. Convicted of nine murders, the imprisoned killer insists he only committed eight. Can Masaya solve the mystery of the last murder, or is he just a pawn in a serial killers’ sick and twisted game?
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We’re opening the 2023 Pittsburgh Japanese Film Festival with this wildly fun, comic-book style cult classic. A violent, guitar-playing, electrically charged boxer faces off against an electronic wizard half-merged with a metallic Buddha…. which is pretty much all you need to know about why this movie rules.
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Akira Kurosawa contemplates life through mortality of one man in this gripping and accomplished film. Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
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When an ambiguously intentioned man in a bear-mask kidnaps a doped-up punk singer, a media circus ensues.
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