A director faces creative block while working on his latest film – a reimagination of his adolescence growing up in a mountain village in rural Japan.
Young Shuji
Sen Hara (Phantom of old woman)
Hideaki Sasaki
Masahiro Saito
A young woman urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.
A young student decides to have no more interaction with the world than is needed to minimally sustain life. His increasingly automaton-like behavior is coupled with a strange clarity of insight about the world around him.
Juan and his urban family live in the Mexican countryside, where they enjoy and suffer a world apart. And nobody knows if these two worlds are complimentary or if they strive to eliminate one another.
Young teenager Bo is too sensitive for the hothouse atmosphere of a boarding school run by a cold, unfeeling would-be man of the cloth. Lonely and scared, he finds a soulmate in the headmaster's son Kim with whom he forms a bond of friendship... that slowly grows into something more.
After botching his latest assignment, a third-ranked Japanese hit man becomes the target of another assassin.
The lives of urbanites intertwine in a world where anything can happen at any time.
Crimes of the Future is set in a future where sexually mature women appear to have been obliterated by a plague produced by the use of cosmetics. The film details the wanderings of Adrian Tripod, director of the dermatological clinic the House of Skin. Tripod seems at a loss following the disappearance of his mentor Antoine Rouge.
Two HIV-positive young men — a semi-employed film critic and a hot hustler — tear off on a cross-country crime spree.
There's more to picture than meets the eye in this journey into oriental metaphysical imagery. Starting (in a very Christian manner) with the Word, the film draws an explosion of visible forms, as if a sign of the shattering of shapes in the mundane world. But time is cyclical, of course, and what was once a multitude of sensible realities must eventually return to the Word and, finally, to sheer Color. (Sound of Eye)
Tharlo is an orphan. Now grown up, he makes a living as a sheep herder in the village. He has grown a ponytail, so people simply call him “Ponytail”, since nobody remembers his real name anyway. Tharlo has a remarkable memory. He remembers so many things, except his own name. He is now in his forties, and he has yet to have his first woman. Now Tharlo goes to town to take a photo for his identity card. He meets a girl in the barber’s shop who changes the course of his life. He embarks on the journey to find his true self. He sells all his sheep and those entrusted by other villagers to him for care, and decides to use the money to go out into the world with the girl, only to find himself being deceived and cheated by her. Ironically, in his journey of self-discovery, Tharlo has lost his sense of self. As he witnesses in the mirror his ponytail being cut off and leaving him bald, he can no longer see himself as a man with a history that he recognizes.
When an American is murdered in a Japanese inn, Tokyo police detective Munesue follows the trail of the killer to New York. There he is joined by a New York City detective named Shuftan and together they sort out the crime.
A young student, alone in Paris, is engaged in strange and bloody experiences of which she is both the authorizer and the victim.
A salaryman debates selling his grandfather's land to pay off his father's debt.
Haru, a bookstore clerk, talks to Yukiko pretending to ask for directions. Haru has detected deep sorrow on Yukiko's face. Meanwhile, Haru has been spending days following Tsuyoshi discretely and checking his expressions.
Four sexually hungry high school students preparing for their university entrance exams meet up with an inebriated teacher singing bawdy drinking songs. This encounter sets them on a less than academic path.
A pimp with no other means to provide for himself finds his life spiralling out of control when his prostitute is sent to prison.
Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.
A man who lost his family in the September 11 attack on New York City runs into his old college roommate. Rekindling the friendship is the one thing that appears able to help the man recover from his grief.
After 25 years, an ex hired gun visits his old colleague, who is now a small town sheriff. Their past relationship is explored, as is how they reflect on it in the present.
A young transgender man explores his gender identity and searches for love in rural Nebraska.
A man tries to clean the blood off himself after committing a violent crime.
Desperate to escape his mind-numbing routine, uptown Manhattan office worker Paul Hackett ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman.
After his young lover, Gitone, leaves him for another man, Encolpio decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another.
The wicked Blue Meanies take over Pepperland, eliminating all color and music. As the only survivor, the Lord Admiral escapes in the yellow submarine and journeys to Liverpool to enlist the help of the Beatles.
The Tenant continuously fails to escape his deadly apartment under five minute time limit as his blood-thirsty neighbor threatens to break in and exterminate him.
A musical audiovisual journey in four parts. A young man finds himself unexpectedly taking an audiovisual odyssey into a world of surreality, slowly recounting his memories, revealing the puzzle pieces that led him to where he is, and maybe how he can get out.
El Topo decides to confront warrior Masters on a trans-formative desert journey he begins with his 6 year old son, who must bury his childhood totems to become a man.
A coming-of-age story about two former childhood friends attempting to make amends following a fight. As their conversation progresses, one of them has to mature in order to reconcile with her friend as well as herself.
Forty-year-old Andreas arrives in a strange city with no memory of how he got there. He is presented with a job, an apartment - even a wife. But before long, Andreas notices that something is wrong. Andreas makes an attempt to escape the city, but he discovers there's no way out. Andreas meets Hugo, who has found a crack in a wall in his cellar. Beautiful music streams out from the crack. Maybe it leads to "the other side"? A new plan for escape is hatched.
Lovell lives with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. One day he experiences strange goings-on and is led down a path of horror after a near-death experience alters his life completely.
Black drops fall from the water faucets, peek through the drains, and flood the city. Sisters Paula and Teresa, cornered in their apartment, can do nothing but observe as that strange substance takes hold of their lives. Hypnotized, with nowhere to go, they come into contact with the liquid. Gradually, reality begins to distort and they get lost in it.
A young girl is playing on some waste ground when she finds a pencil with a face. Whatever she draws with the pencil becomes real. Just an ordinary day.
There is a war in the world between the men and the women. A young girl tries to escape this reality and comes to a hidden place where a strange unicorn lives with a family: sister, brother, many children and an old woman that never leaves her bed but stays in contact with the world through her radio.
The fanatic beliefs of an internet mystic, a cult leader, and a rookie cop gone rogue are tested on the hunt for the "Hidden Man" -- an elusive forest-dwelling cryptid that terrorizes their idyllic suburb.
A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his mother – the leader of a strange religious cult – and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name.
Beat Takeshi lives the busy and sometimes surreal life of a showbiz celebrity. One day he meets his blond lookalike named Kitano, a shy convenience store cashier, who, still an unknown actor, is waiting for his big break. After their paths cross, Kitano seems to begin hallucinating about becoming Beat.
"Touring makes you crazy," Frank Zappa says, explaining that the idea for this film came to him while the Mothers of Invention were touring. The story, interspersed with performances by the Mothers and the Royal Symphony Orchestra, is a tale of life on the road. The band members' main concerns are the search for groupies and the desire to get paid.