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
Ryotatsu, the wayward Priest blinded by Shinkai, the Wicked Priest, has his own story in this ultra-violent tale from the era of the Meiji Reconstruction. When a woman leaves her blind son at the Monastery, Ryotatsu is forced to teach the boy how to cope as a blind person in old Japan. When he takes the child with him on the road to find the boy's mother, they run afoul of not only yakuza gangsters, but some corrupt army officers have been trying to sway public opinion against the Satsuma rebels by posing as members of Saigo Takamori's group. It's a bloody mistake for them to underestimate the strength of the Blind Priest, and he'll make them pay with their lives!
Kayo, who is famous for her beauty, own a bar in a port town. The establishment is always crowded with customers infatuated with her. For the past three years, Kayo has been in a relationship with Murakami, a city councilman. One day, a young man and woman, Jun and Yoko, come to town. They are planning to stow away somewhere, but no one will take them in. Exhausted, they happen to come to Kayo's bar. Eventually, Kayo's past and the man she used to be with are revealed, and Jun and Yoko's desperate actions lead to the story's conclusion...
A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.
It's a thrilling, action-packed entertainer with sparks of men versus villains in an up-and-down tale of brothers burning with masculine will and passion.
Gokudo Shimamura comes to blows with the Delinquent Boss who rolls into town with his motorcycle gang.
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.
In an alternate Japan, territorial street gangs form opposing factions collectively known as the Tokyo Tribes. The simmering tension between them is about to boil over into all-out war.
Chiba, looking gnarly, and acting as animalistic as ever, stars alongside Matsukata as violent gangsters battling their way through fight after bloody fight with rival yakuza on the streets of Okinawa.