Naomi Kawase • 2015 • Japan • A heart-warming tale of food and friendship in contemporary Japan.
Sentaro runs a small bakery on the corner of a tree-lined street. Tokue is a seventy-six year old woman skilled in the art of preparing an, a traditional red bean paste in dorayaki. The two form an unlikely bond as the seasons shift and blend.
Steeped in rich sensorial detail, and attuned to both the passing rhythms of nature and the simple pleasures of life, Sweet Bean is a heart-warming tale of food and friendship in contemporary Japan. Celebrated filmmaker Naomi Kawase's ninth narrative feature premiered at Cannes, Rotterdam, and São Paulo, where it won the Audience Award. Sweet Bean is a New York Times Critics' Pick.
Yōichi Higashi • Japan • 1996 • A gentle, rhythmic portrait of youth
Seizo and Yukihiko are identical twins living in a rural Japanese village. Though the year is 1948, the war seems distant, as the boys live out the halcyon days of youth—rolling through grass, catching fish in a brook, getting...
Shin’ya Tsukamoto • Japan • 2004 • A shifting, astonishing vision of amnesia
Hiroshi is involved in a horrible accident. Both he and his girlfriend, Ryoko, were in a car crash, and only he survived. He remembers none of this when he wakes up in a hospital bed one morning, his memory wiped clean....
Kiyoshi Kurosawa • Japan • 2020 • A masterful wartime romance co-written by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Kobe, 1940. The outbreak of World War II looms on the horizon, and local merchant and amateur filmmaker Yusaku has a bad feeling. Following a trip to Manchuria, he becomes determined to expose events he...
