Rainy Dog(1997)

Kikujiro(ja)

Brash, loudmouthed and opportunistic, Kikujiro is the unlikely companion for Masao who is determined to see the mother he has never met. The two begin a series of adventures which soon turns out to be a whimsical journey of laughter and tears with a wide array of surprises and unique characters along the way.

Fireworks(ja)

Detective Nishi is relieved from a stakeout to visit his sick wife in hospital. He is informed that she is terminally ill, and is advised to take her home. During his visit, a suspect shoots one detective dead and leaves Nishi's partner, Horibe, paralyzed. Nishi leaves the police force to spend time with his wife at home, and must find a way to pay off his debts to the yakuza.

Tetsuo: The Iron Man(ja)

A "metal fetishist", driven mad by the maggots wriggling in the wound he's made to embed metal into his flesh, runs out into the night and is accidentally run down by a Japanese businessman and his girlfriend. The pair dispose of the corpse in hopes of quietly moving on with their lives. However, the businessman soon finds that he is now plagued by a vicious curse that transforms his flesh into iron.

Dead Reckoning(en)

War heroes Rip Murdock and Johnny Drake are sent to Washington, D.C, to receive top honors for their service. Johnny, seemingly terrified by the publicity that awaits him, jumps off the train and later turns up dead. Suspecting foul play, Rip begins digging into his pal's past. He encounters cover-ups, threats to his own life and deadly femme fatale Coral Chandler.

Headshot(id)

A young man washes ashore, his memory gone - but his past comes back to haunt him after he is nursed back to health and his killing ability is needed when he takes on a powerful drug lord.

Red Beard(ja)

Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.

Dirty Work(en)

Unemployed and recently dumped, Mitch and his buddy Sam start a revenge-for-hire business to raise the $50,000 that Sam's father needs to get a heart transplant.

Ley Lines(ja)

The story follows a trio of Japanese youths of Chinese descent who escape their semi-rural upbringing and relocate to Shinjuku, Tokyo, where they befriend a troubled Shanghai prostitute and fall foul of a local crime syndicate. Like many of Miike's works, the film examines the underbelly of respectable Japanese society and the problems of assimilation faced by non-ethnically Japanese people in Japan.

Full Metal Yakuza(ja)

After being brutally murdered in a gangster-style execution, Kensuke Hagane finds himself brought back to life by a mad scientist and rebuilt as a robot-human hybrid with a serious thirst for vengeance and the tools to carry it out.

Macross Plus: The Movie(ja)

Three decades after the great war between the humans and the Zentradi, the U.N. government is developing new technologies to use in their transforming fighter aircraft by running tests on the colony planet Eden. Military test pilots and former childhood friends, loose cannon Isamu Alva Dyson and the Zentradi mixed race Guld Goa Bowman, are selected to each pilot a new aircraft (Shinsei Industries' YF-19 & General Galaxy's YF-21) for Project Super Nova, to choose the newest successor to the VF-11 Thunderbolt variable fighter which is currently still in use by the U.N. Spacy military forces. Their own personal grudges end up disrupting the tests, and begin to wreak havoc on the program.

Shinjuku Triad Society(ja)

Tatsuhito, a cop, pursues Chinese warlord Wang through the underworld of Shinjuku and over to Taiwan.

Night of the Living Dead(en)

A group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse find themselves fending off a horde of recently dead, flesh-eating ghouls.

To Catch a Thief(en)

An ex-thief is accused of enacting a new crime spree, so to clear his name he sets off to catch the new thief, who’s imitating his signature style.

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood(en)

Los Angeles, 1969. TV star Rick Dalton, a struggling actor specializing in westerns, and stuntman Cliff Booth, his best friend, try to survive in a constantly changing movie industry. Dalton is the neighbor of the young and promising actress and model Sharon Tate, who has just married the prestigious Polish director Roman Polanski…

Oldboy(ko)

With no clue how he came to be imprisoned, drugged and tortured for 15 years, a desperate man seeks revenge on his captors.

Tenet(en)

Armed with only one word - Tenet - and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.

Vertigo(en)

A retired San Francisco detective suffering from acrophobia investigates the strange activities of an old friend's wife, all the while becoming dangerously obsessed with her.

The Handmaiden(ko)

In 1930s Korea, a swindler and a young woman pose as a Japanese count and a handmaiden to seduce a Japanese heiress and steal her fortune.

L'Âge d'or(fr)

The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.

Joker(en)

During the 1980s, a failed stand-up comedian is driven insane and turns to a life of crime and chaos in Gotham City while becoming an infamous psychopathic crime figure.

Blood Vendetta(ja)

The film tells about Masayoshi, a noble Yakuza who lives by the laws of honor and humanity, and who is bound by an oath to his brother in a conflict between the Gamblers' family and the Tekiya family.

Chivalrous Man: Junkyard of Life(ja)

End of the Taisho period. In the city of Kiryu, where the wind is constantly blowing, the heads of the yakuza families of Kanhasshu (eight Kanto provinces) were to raise funds for the construction of the Chuji Kunisada monument. Responsible for the fundraiser was Jokichi from the Asami family, but Matsugoro from the Kuromatsu family, who wanted to become the greatest boss of the Kanhasshu yakuza, is trying to take over the textile market that Jokichi controls and intercept the fundraiser.

Dolls(ja)

Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.

Unfinished(ja)

The yakuza have their best days behind them and are only a shadow of themselves. The old rituals seem out of date and their tattoos make them outcasts of society. The inexperienced student Ryō stumbles into their ranks by chance, and before he knows it, he becomes entangled in dark machinations. He quickly succumbs to the fascination of omnipotence fantasies and hedonistic decadence and sinks deeper and deeper into a parallel world of prostitution, blackmail and violence. However, there is one thing that Ryō has not considered in his naivety: once yakuza, always yakuza!

Tokyo Mafia: Battle for Shinjuku(ja)

Former hitman Ginya Yabuki (Riki Takeuchi) left the mafia and split somewhat contentiously with his longtime former partner. Years later, that same ex-partner has emerged as the head of a very dangerous crime syndicate and Yabuki is forced to confront his former partner, which may start an all-out war within the Tokyo Mafia.

Tokyo Mafia: Yakuza Blood(ja)

Ten years after his greatest triumph, Yabuki has lost the Mafia that was once his to rule. But when a young gangster comes to him for guidance, he discovers that the old rage still burns. It's time for Yabuki's final stand and one last blaze of glory!

Gozu(ja)

Minami mistakenly kills a gangster associate of his named Brother. Almost as soon as the murder takes place, the body of the deceased man is gone, prompting Minami to conduct a search. While looking, he finds a mysterious isolated hotel where he decides to take a rest. Not only are the front desk clerks a bit strange, but even the ambiance feels unusual. Minami soon realizes he may have gotten more than he bargained for.

The Pinkie(ja)

Since they were both five, Ryosuke has been stalked by Momoko - the ugliest girl in the village. Her love for Ryosuke is so boundless that she has her face surgically altered to suit his taste - but still he wants nothing to do with her. Ryosuke goes in for fleeting romance - for example, with the girlfriend of a gangster boss. But when he finds out about their affair, he has Ryosuke's little finger hacked off. Magically, the finger falls into Momoko's hands, and she uses it to clone Ryosuke, so she can finally have him (or almost him) for herself. And this is just the first five minutes of Lisa Takeba's short-but-powerful feature debut. Just like in her previous short films, the director - who cut her teeth in the advertising world and as the writer of a video game - throws a lot of genres and techniques into the mix: from science fiction to gangster films, from hospital eroticism to animation. Hectic and absurd, but with its heart in the right place. © IFFR

Crying Freeman(en)

A lethal assassin for a secret Chinese organisation, who sheds tears of regret each time he kills, is seen swiftly and mercilessly executing three Yakuza gangsters by a beautiful artist. She is captivated by the grace of his kill and later falls in love with him. An intense power struggle for the leadership of the Yakuza Clans ensues as they seek vengeance for the death of their leader.

Savage City: Angel Whisper(ja)

A corrupt cop teams up with an unlikely partner to protect the city from a gang of ruthless drug addicts.

Let's Go Karaoke!(ja)

Satomi Oka is worried about his final choir competition but is accosted by a shadowy gangster, Kyouji Narita, who demands karaoke sessions with him.

Scoundrel(ja)

Shimamura is a violent street thug who joins the yakuza & is merciless & unscrupulous on his rise, lacking any sense of either duty or chivalry. When imprisoned, he is repeatedly transferred from one prison to another, because no one can handle him.

Shizukanaru Don: Yakuza Side Story(ja)

Ichi the Killer(ja)

As sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer Kakihara searches for his missing boss he comes across Ichi, a repressed and psychotic killer who may be able to inflict levels of pain that Kakihara has only dreamed of.

Sonatine(ja)

Murakawa, an aging Tokyo yakuza tiring of gangster life, is sent by his boss to Okinawa along with a few of his henchmen to help end a gang war, supposedly as mediators between two warring clans. He finds that the dispute between the clans is insignificant and whilst wondering why he was sent to Okinawa at all, his group is attacked in an ambush. The survivors flee and make a decision to lay low at the beach while they await further instructions.

Daughter of Time(ja)

A member of the jieitai ("Self-Defense Force"; i.e. Japanese military) is on leave and finds a woman giving birth in a graveyard in the former Yoshiwara district. He takes her to an inn to gove birth, and stays on a few days as she recovers, but becomes fascinated with the strange people he meets there, particularly the owner, who visits a house in his courtyard every day to talk and give food to his mother. He says she is very sick and can't leave bed, but no one else has ever been inside or seen her.

Glorious Fights(ja)

A young leader of the Yamazaki family of Nagasaki, Takida (Ken Takakura) is an A-bomb survivor. He fiercely battles violent elements in southern Japan like there is no tomorrow.

Three Pretty Devils(ja)

A trio of teenage tarts try to earn money through shoplifting and prostitution scams and get into deep trouble.

The Viper Brothers: 18 Extortion Threats(ja)

Part 4 in a long running (8+1 films) action/comedy/melodrama series about a pair of short tempered, amoral, but not evil chinpira (Bunta Sugawara and Tamio Kawachi) thinking too big of themselves. Sugawara tries to overcome a traumatic experience of getting in bed blindfolded with a girl who turned out to be an old granny. Later he and Kawaji try to settle down in a neighbourhood harassed by businessman yakuza Bin Amatsu.

The Scoundler vs. The Viper Brothers(ja)

A crossover between Wakayama's Gokudo and Sugawara Mamushi series. Gokudo runs a restaurant and makes Takuzo Kawatani his kitchen bitch. He tries to do the same for the Mamushi bros. but the boys don't play along, which pisses Gokudo off. Things get worse when he starts helping a young teacher and Bunta has a crush on a pretty girl... and unbeknownst to them it's the same woman! Yes, the film has not one but two romantic subplots! Of course it all ends in bloodshed.