21st-century Japan

A professional cellist gets a new job as an assistant mortician in this delightful and bittersweet drama, winner of the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar® in 2009.

Koreeda’s drama about four children left to fend for themselves is a heartbreaking study of childhood neglect.

Koreeda’s subtle, moving account of the tensions within a family is his most Ozu-like film.

A beautiful and contemplative portrait of grief from Cannes-winning filmmaker Naomi Kawase (Sweet Bean, Still the Water).

A struggling street food vendor accepts help from an elderly lady with a sensational recipe up her sleeve, in Naomi Kawase's bittersweet drama of culinary redemption.

After a schoolgirl is molested on the notorious 'groper train' in their town, a group a schoolgirls band together to emact revenge.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cuire, Pulse) makes a triumphant return to the horror genre with this macabre and deeply unsettling thriller.

The living and the dead coexist in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cannes-winning meditation on love and loss.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's dark and apocalyptic J-Horror foretells how technology serves to isolate us as it grows more important to our lives.

Single mother Hana must bring up her wolf children away from the prying eyes of the neighbours in this stunning anime.

A student sets in motion a series of events that could result in the earth colliding with the parallel world.

Breathtaking, multi-award-winning feature about a girl with a special power… Makoto Konno's life changes after a brush with death, when she discovers she has the ability to jump backwards in time.

Kôji Fukada's mixture of slow-burn thriller and off-kilter family drama won Un Certain Regard Jury prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.

Mamoru Oshii's stunning sequel to the 1995 anime classic explores issues around identity, existence and what exactly defines our humanity.

Bizarre and unsettling sex fantasy from Shinya Tsukamoto (Tetsuo), about a woman blackmailed by a stranger into enacting his wildest fantasies.

An eccentric, pregnant young lady returns to her hometown to help her downtrodden old neighbours, in Yûya Ishii 's strange, whimsical comedy.

Sawako tries to save her father's ailing clam-packing business, but it's an uphill struggle, in Yuya Ishii's joyous, nuanced, comic drama.

A redneck lumberjack is recruited to work on a rookie producer's inane zombie movie, in this hilarious movie-making satire.

Before The Hunger Games there was Battle Royale, Kinji Fukasaku's magnificently twisted shocker in which tearaway teens are given three days to kill or be killed.

Sion Sono's unique brand of subversive cinema explodes onscreen once again with this ingenious hybrid of Yakuza gang action and hip-hop musical.

Japanese cinema's enfant terrible, Sion Sono, unleashes this demented, whirlwind tale of cults, love, violence and perversion.

The Sound of Music meets Dawn of the Dead in Takashi Miike's deranged mix of grotesque stop-motion animation, surreal musical numbers, and zombie melodrama.

Takashi Miike's awesome riff on Romeo and Juliet, done as a pop musical stuffed with golden oldies from the 60s.

Surreal and hilarious yakuza horror from the dependably unhinged Takashi Miike, concerning an assassin's increasingly strange quest to find a missing corpse.