Movies: Naomi Kawase

The master of a dorayaki pastry store hires a 76-year-old woman whose talents attract customers from all over. But she's hiding a troubling secret. Life's joys are found in the little details, and no matter what may be weighing you down, everyone lov...

After suffering through a long and unsuccessful series of fertility treatments, Satoko and her husband Kiyokazu make the decision to adopt a child. Six years after adopting a boy they named Asato, Satoko has quit her job to concentrate fully on her h...

Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring....

On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips ...

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

Using rare footage and exclusive interviews with filmmakers from all over the globe, "Reel Herstory" corrects the historic notion that women behind the scenes in motion pictures held peripheral careers compared with their male counterparts....

Depicts the life of a family in a remote Japanese timber village. Family head Tahara Kozo lives with his mother Sachiko, wife Yasuyo, nephew Eisuke and young daughter Michiru. Economic recession and failed development plans cause tragedy in the famil...

A young woman working at a retirement home takes an elderly man living there on an excursion into the countryside, but the two wind up stranded in the titular forest....

A young bioarchaeologist Yukisuke is attracted to a girl Koyomi, who runs a small stand of taiyaki pastry that he often buys. Koyomi is hospitalized, however, by a car accident on a rainy day after they go out together, and wakes up with short term m...

Centres on Jeanne, a journalist tracking a mysterious rare herb that appears only once every 997 years....

Saiko travels to Thailand but she jumps out of the cab after knowing the driver's intentions. However, her life changes after she meets Greg....

Filmmaker Naomi Kawase captures the love, loss, and loneliness felt as she prepares to move out of her foster mother's home....

A quiet hamlet hidden in the remote mountains village of Japan. In this hamlet once lively with hikers and shops, we meet Ihika, a 12-year-old born into a family that has run an inn for generations. Her father has been living apart for a few years. S...

The Aso family live in the old town of Nara. One Day, Kei, one of the Aso's twin boys suddenly disappears. Five years later seventeen-year old Shun, the remaining twin, is an art student. He now has to move forward with his life, together with his ch...

In memory of the Japanese earthquake on 3.11, each director presents a 3 minute and 11 second short film in tribute to those who were lost that day....

After losing his son, Tatsuya is anguished by the danger of his ancient family line coming to an end. His mother Haru urges him to embark on a loveless second marriage, and meanwhile he secretly hopes that his daughter Yoshiko will marry a husband wi...

As a tunnel construction project threatens the natural order of one of Japan's last untouched regions, an old man and his granddaughter Haruna's humble lifestyle begins to influence the outlook of a man from Tokyo....

Reality and fantasy melds as a Korean documentary film director attempts to capture life in the small town of Gojo, Japan....

A diary film about Kawase's relationship with her grandma and her search for her father, whom she has not seen since her parents divorced during her early childhood....

Hong Sang-Soo’s Lost in the Mountains (South Korea, 32min) the visitor is the supremely self-centred Mi-Sook, who drives to Jeonju on impulse to see her classmate Jin-Young – only to discover that her friend is having an affair with their married pro...