
When his father flees from debt, carefree college student Osamu sees his life turn upside-down. Expelled from school and evicted from his apartment, he becomes one of Japan’s many ‘net cafe refugees’, barely scraping by each day with temporary and part-time work. Even though he’s still in Tokyo, his circumstances drive him to see and experience his home city in new ways. Trying to survive, Osamu gradually acquaints himself with the ‘invisible’ spaces occupied by the wanderers and homeless of Tokyo… people just like himself.


Serizawa

When his father flees from debt, carefree college student Osamu sees his life turn upside-down. Expelled from school and evicted from his apartment, he becomes one of Japan’s many ‘net cafe refugees’, barely scraping by each day with temporary and part-time work. Even though he’s still in Tokyo, his circumstances drive him to see and experience his home city in new ways. Trying to survive, Osamu gradually acquaints himself with the ‘invisible’ spaces occupied by the wanderers and homeless of Tokyo… people just like himself.
2014-02-22
5
Scraping by in the Tokyo streets.
6.7In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.
7.8In the outskirts of Tokyo, a poor but close-knit group living on the fringes of society survives through shoplifting and odd jobs. When Osamu and his son take in a neglected young girl, their already fragile existence begins to unravel. As the family grows attached to her, buried secrets surface, forcing them to confront the true meaning of love, belonging, and what makes a family.
7.4The struggles of a group of outcasts living in "Yentown", in an alternate-future Japan.
7.3An elderly couple journey to Tokyo to visit their grown children, only to find them preoccupied and self-involved.
7.0Two 14-year-olds from troubled, abusive homes come together sharing misery and pain. In the aftermath of an earthquake, the classmates learn how to survive while relying on one another for emotional and physical support.
6.2Prostitutes in burnt out Tokyo ghetto of post-WWII Japan peddle their flesh and save one-third of their money for a proposed dancehall to be named Paradise. The hookers live in a bombed-out building, but they accept the precarious situation with typical resolve.
5.9Hannah and Tahir fall in love while homeless on the streets of New York. Shelter explores how they got there, and as we learn about their pasts we realize they need each other to build a future.
7.1In the city of Yokosuka, Kinta and his lover Haruko, both involved with yakuza, brave the post-occupation period with a goal to be together.
6.2After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.
7.7Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.
6.8Takumi and his daughter Hana live in Mizubiki Village, close to Tokyo. One day, the village inhabitants become aware of a plan to build a camping site near Takumi's house offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to nature.
6.2Working in a Boston homeless shelter, Nick Flynn re-encounters his father, a con man and self-proclaimed poet. Sensing trouble in his own life, Nick wrestles with the notion of reaching out yet again to his dad.
7.3Based on a true story. Liz Murray is a young girl who is taken care of by her loving, but drug-addicted parents. Liz becomes homeless at 15 and after a tragedy comes upon her, she begins her work to finish high school.
6.7Jo, the mother of seven children, divorces her second husband in order to marry Jake, a successful but promiscuous screenwriter. Though they are physically and emotionally compatible, they are slowly torn apart.
6.8International art dealer Ron Hall must befriend a dangerous homeless man in order to save his struggling marriage to his wife, a woman whose dreams will lead all three of them on the journey of their lives.
7.9Kyuta, a boy living in Shibuya, and Kumatetsu, a lonesome beast from Jutengai, an imaginary world. One day, Kyuta forays into the imaginary world and, as he's looking for his way back, meets Kumatetsu who becomes his spirit guide. That encounter leads them to many adventures.
7.3In an abandoned Tokyo overrun by bubbles and gravitational abnormalities, one gifted young man has a fateful meeting with a mysterious girl.
7.1Tokiko patiently awaits her husband's return from WWII when her four-year old son falls ill. She takes him to the doctor but has no means of paying, so she resorts to prostitution. A month later, her husband returns to find his desperate wife, who tells him the truth. Together, they must deal with the consequences.
6.2A former American G.I. joins a yakuza family after his release from prison in post-World War II Osaka.
6.5Mike, a rough sleeper in London, is trapped in a cycle of self-destruction as he attempts to turn his life around. Along the way, he encounters unexpected chances for a fresh start.
7.3The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.
7.4Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
6.7A lonely, chain-smoking office lady in Tokyo falls for her teacher when she decides to take English lessons. When her teacher disappears, she sets out on a journey to find him.
7.5Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.
6.1March 11, 2011. The biggest tsunami Japan has ever experienced triggers the Fukushima disaster. Risks are being downplayed but the foreign community in Tokyo is terrified by this tragic event and the fact that no one is capable of assessing its scope. Among them, Alexandra, a French executive newly arrived from Hong Kong to work in a bank, has to face this nuclear crisis. Torn apart between fol- lowing the company’s instructions and going back to her husband and children who are still in Hong Kong, she will find herself defending honor and given word, despite the pervading terror and chaos.
8.0In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.
7.9A struggling salesman takes custody of his son as he's poised to begin a life-changing professional career.
8.0A group of juvenile delinquents live a violent life in the infamous slums of Mexico City; among them Pedro, whose morality is gradually corrupted and destroyed by the others.
7.4The Master's late-night diner welcomes a woman troubled by funeral fans, an elderly scam victim, and a noodle delivery man struggling with love.
6.8Takumi and his daughter Hana live in Mizubiki Village, close to Tokyo. One day, the village inhabitants become aware of a plan to build a camping site near Takumi's house offering city residents a comfortable "escape" to nature.
0.0A sweet and melancholy story that depicts, with beautiful sentimentality, the day when a dreamy and lovely young girl first discovers love in the twilight of Tokyo Tower.
7.9On Christmas Eve, three homeless people living on the streets of Tokyo discover a newborn baby among the trash and set out to find its parents.
7.7Teenage Mutsuko comes to Tokyo for work but ends up at a repair shop. She befriends the owner's family. Neighbors Hiromi, writer Chagawa with admirer Junnosuke strive alongside them in postwar Tokyo's evolution.
6.8Mika works as a nurse by day; by night she entertains covetous men at a girls' bar. Shinji is blind in one eye and ekes out a living as a construction worker. Young and grown-up at the same time, they both lead a lonely existence, but somehow their paths keep miraculously crossing under the Tokyo sky.
8.2The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
Adapted from the critically acclaimed Off-Broadway show by actor-writer Robert Galinsky, The Bench is an exploration of the often-unheard stories of people living on the streets of Los Angeles.
6.7A daughter is constantly overshadowed by her famous father, but she is determined to make her own mark in the world.
6.4Nagito has a fetish for calligraphy on the human body and meets her ideal soulmate Jerome, an English translator sent to Japan. However, once Nagiko's father's gay publisher rejoins the scene, the story is overtaken by treachery and bloodlust.
6.8Buddies working at an oshibori factory bond over an uncontrollable rage neither can control, as well as a strange jellyfish they keep as a pet.