Discover Movies

Documentary giving an extensive look into the design and development of the creatures created for artist Takashi Murakami's first feature film, Jellyfish Eyes.

Documentary of the first episode of Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters.

The 92-year-old previous nightclub dancer Coby Yee decides to get back on stage again after joining the senior dance troupe Grant Avenue Follies. Together they go on a tour for the last time, bridging once isolated Chinese communities in the US, Cuba and China.

A short documentary series showing the behind the scenes experience of creating "I Told Sunset About You."

During the rehearsal of the short film God’s Daughter Dances, Hae-Joon faces difficulty on his first acting session, and Woo-kyeom is having a hard time playing his gay role.

In 1983, photographer Gocho Shigeo met an early death at the young age of 36. The view we see reflected in Gocho’s photographic images has become more profound over time since his death and has struck a chord in people’s hearts. While focusing on Gocho’s collection of photographs Self and Others, the film also visits places associated with him, creating a collage with the manuscripts, letters, photographs and voice recordings remaining in an attempt to capture “one more gesture”—a theme pursued by Gocho through photographic expression. This film is neither a critical biography nor a monograph on the photographer. Rather, we are offered a new perception. As if mesmerized, the photographs Gocho left behind captivate us in their gaze.

Cinema Gwangju is the first theater in the Honam-region and the only theater that opened in 1935. The cinema has screened films in its original place up to these days. A musician Gonne Choi invites the seven musicians to share "Gwangju-ness" from her own perspective and they visit the cinema to speak and sing about their own "Withstanding and Existing". This documentary also contains the story of the painter Park Tae-gyu, who continuously has been working on hand-painting movie posters from the 1990s until today.

In this documentary, director Tang records his own son's birth and growing up, his father's recovering from a stroke and a nostalgic trip home to China. (In the 1940's his father evacuated with the Nationalist troops to Taiwan after it lost the Mainland to the Communist in the war. It wasn't until 1980's were people allowed to go home to visit in Mainland China). From his search for the earliest memory of life, with a close observation and sensitivity, he exams the parallels of the different lives of a different time. In his previous work, "HOW DEEP IS THE OCEAN," director Tang ends it with the ultrasound image of his unborn child, representing the beginning of a new life. With this work, "HOW HIGH IS THE MOUNTAIN," it is rather a beginning of a series of questions about life and a continuation of examination of his own life and the longing of a perfect world.

A film producer, an assassin, and a patriot. These aren’t three characters in this film but three ways of describing Wu Dun, a member of the United Bamboo Gang who murdered the Taiwanese-American writer Henry Liu and became a producer of wuxia films. Hsu Che-yu, who previously brought Single Copy (IFFR 2020) and Re-rupture (IFFR 2018) to Rotterdam, visits Wu’s abandoned studio to restage the events with forensic scanning techniques.

Performance artist Florence and documentary filmmaker Tze-woon are lovers. They propose to exchange each other’s distressing memories before they met and attempt to re-enact each other’s experience with their own art form. Could they really walk closer towards each other through the process?

Sparked by the demolition and reconstruction of its century-old campus, Ying Wa Girls' School embarks on a project to chronicle the transformation of its students through the camera of director Mabel Cheung, its distinguished alumna. Following a group of young students since 2011, the documentary captures the trials and tribulations that go with the most turbulent decade in Hong Kong's history.

"No Flower Without Rain" is the 3rd AKB48 documentary. The movie feature various moments of 2012, such as Maeda Atsuko's graduation, Sashihara Rino's transference to HKT48, Oshima Yuko's winning the 4th Senbatsu Election and the Tokyo Dome concert.

Kyogen performers Mansaku Nomura, Mansai and Yuki, three generations of father and son! Kyogen is a human comedy! What is the goal of the father and son Kyogen performers who live in the traditional arts?

’Being fat’ often has negative connotations and is seen as a state that needs to be changed. Amy and Mallie suffered much frustration before learning to live in harmony with their bodies and advocating for body equality.

17 riders with avarage age 81 decide to follow the dream of their youth and start their journey to ride around Taiwan island.

Director Ryu Hyung-seok, who served as a conscripted firefighter during his mandatory military service, made a documentary about firefighters. Responding to calls from those on the edge of life and death, these modern-day heroes at the Yangsan Firestation and Ulsan Fire Headquarters are the focus.

Film director Nobuhiko Obayashi went to Russia in 1992 and visited, with his crew, five families from five different cities and asked one member of each family to record their daily life in their homes on video. Using old lullabies as background, the documentary reveals the intimacy, joys, fears and expectations of these families.

This documentary follows the daily lives of blind and deaf people: deaf-blind people living alone on Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture; a man in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, who chose to live in his community despite the earthquake and tsunami; a young man in Hiroshima who wants to be independent so that he can marry while continuing to practice judo; Professor Satoshi Fukushima of the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology who became the first deaf-blind person to teach full-time at a university in the world.

After the crackdown of the pro-democracy protesters in the 8888 Uprising on 8th August 1988, Tarji's parents were students who joined the protest in Rangoon, left Burma to Thailand through Koh Song Island (Victoria Point) of Ranong Province. They moved and worked in the Southern region of Thailand. The documentary focuses on observation Tarji's life that is about to change from children to the world of adults. The film interviews the life of Tarji and his mother. Follow Tarji to various locations, observing his coming of age.

Who says the elderly could only wait for death? A group of them, averagely aged 70, broke the stereotype. They formed a team of cheerleaders and performed at the opening ceremony of the World Game in Kaohsiung in July 2009. Their 9-month preparation left not only them but their families the most memorable memories of their lives.

The follow up to LUCAS Documentary Part1 | Freeze

In the 1940s, as the fate of the Chinese people and the dignity of Chinese Buddhism fell into the nadir, a 14-year-old boy was ordained to be a Buddhist monk in Jiangsu Province, China. Since then he has embarked on a journey to pursue and spread the Dharma for nearly 70 years.

There are as many births and child delivery stories as there are people. Despite all the progress of medicine and science, it still happens that lives get lost during childbirth. On such a daily and common matter, we want to interview mothers on their intimate experience of giving birth, and adapt that material into animation to have it seen by audiences of all generations. This is a documentary animation on the very beginning and the mystery of life, told from the point of view of mothers.

This film highlights the collapse of Nanyang Education Group, the flagship of private education in China. Other private school principals, teachers and students, as well as scholars who study education, and some government officials were interviewed. They discuss the causes from different angles. Due to the marketization of education, in order to ensure their vested interests, public schools that originally held public educational resources have adopted strategies such as "prestigious schools building branch schools" and "prestigious schools running private schools" to privatize public educational resources in order to enjoy exclusive market share. The education management department is also willing to profit from such practices and use this competition to eliminate the idea of independent and pluralistic education. Under the protection of the monopoly of privileged interests and the "Promotion Law", many outstanding private schools shut down.

Band-Maid's live set on the Pacific Stage at the Summer Sonic Tokyo festival, Saturday 16 August 2025. Set list: 1) From Now On 2) Zen 3) Domination 4) Ready to Rock 5) Hate? (with Kanami & Misa battle) 6) What is Justice? 7) Saiki MC 8) No God 9) Tamaya! (with Kanami & Misa battle and Akane solo) 10) Choose Me (with extended intro) 11) Protect You 12) Screaming.

Luo Luo’s intense fear of Covid-19 keeps her in the house during the pandemic. She listens to her father relate their family history, and spends time on Zoom with fellow Folk Memory Project members Wu Wenguang and Zhang Mengqi.

The 2008 earthquake in China utterly destroyed not only physical structures but also human lives in mountain cities like Beichuan. Through the gracefully interwoven stories of three survivors from the town, Fallen City documents the struggle to rebuild amidst ruin.

In 1994, Alexander Sokurov accompanied Russian troops assigned to a frontier military post at the Tajikistan/Afghanistan border to film their experiences. While unnamed tribal forces occasionally engaged the troops in skirmishes, Sokurov’s haunting documentary chronicles the downtime between activity.

The fierce and domineering Lee Volcano specializes in animal rescue and has lynched animal cruelty offenders. Some activists hate his style, but some supporters believe he has done justice to the ineffective animal protection laws.

It is in the spirit of an experience and experiment that Hang Jun Lee's «The Cracked Share» must be viewed. Seized in moments of visual detachment during periods of emotional contact, these images are oxidized residues of fixed light and chemical elements of transformed from living organisms. No plastic expression can ever be more than a residue of the experience and yet, the residue is the recognition of the experience, loss permeates the work and yet somehow the experience endures, recalling the event more or less clearly, like the undisturbed ashes of an object consumed by flames. The recognition of this object, so little representative and so fragile, speaks to us of this artist's isolation. «The Cracked Share» is quite wonderfully dense and visceral in nature ...

Documentary Blu-ray release from the "Mobile Suit Gundam" series commemorating the 30th Anniversary of the anime.

Musa and his friends, all men, all young, all from Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region on China's northwestern border, now wander great cities in the East talking, shooting up, remembering home and practicing the one true skill they have: they steal.

In this short filmed during Chung Mong-hong's study in the United States, a giant cross hovers above, as floating images of the city segue into the vast expanse on the beach where an exorcism is underway, with people holding crosses and self-flagellating, contrasting with the skyline on the other side of the city, the nostalgia and alienation of the sojourner. During the exorcism, a voice-over relates the varied reactions of the bystanders. What is ‘exorcism’, and how do symbols, sounds and imagery relate to each other? In this highly experimental work, Chung compares the director’s montage with the process of exorcism, offering an alternative interpretation and reconstruction of the film’s structure and narrative.

By the Gyeongho river in Sancheong-gun, Gyeongsangnam-do Province, is located Sungsim-won where the patients of Hansen’s disease stay. It was built with the money raised from selling the relief supplies after the Korean War and has been precious home to many Hansen patients. Until Sungsim bridge was constructed over the Gyeongho river, the only vehicle that connected them with the outside world was a steel boat. Currently this small steel boat rests in Sungsim-won bearing the shadow of the painful time in the past.

"Sanrizuka: The Three-Day War" is a documentary by Shinsuke Ogawa chronicling the escalation of conflict surrounding the Japanese government’s plan to build a new international airport on farmland in Sanrizuka near Tokyo. As farmers resisted eviction and activists from across the country joined the struggle, clashes with police intensified, resulting in large-scale confrontations that marked a critical phase of the Sanrizuka movement.

A 70-year-old man taken care of by his wife is about to die due to his illness. On his last day, his runaway son comes back to him. A college student, their grandchild, who decides to visit his building contractor father. They have not met each other in a long while since the father is no longer a part of the family.

At the eastern end of Seoul, in a huge apartment complex, it has long been a paradise for cats and people to run around and give love and joy together. However, there are people who are worried about cats who are not leaving the place which will be demolished soon, ahead of reconstruction. "I want to ask. Do you want to keep living here?" For the happy farewell of cats and people, a beautiful struggle begins!

A candid peek into the culture of male sex workers in Beijing.

The music that adorned the time of Kivotos is reborn through the majestic melodies of an orchestra. All the precious moments shared with the students are woven into one grand harmony in '2025 Sound Archive: The Orchestra'. The melody that resonates deeply in your heart is filled with unforgettable memories. The emotions of the day will echo once again in theaters.

One of the best-known Chinese figurative painters, Liu Xiaodong goes back to his hometown of Jincheng, in the province of Liaoning (North-East China), to re-paint again friends and relatives after several years have gone by. With a soundtrack by famed composer Lim Giong (Millennium Mambo, The Assassin).

When conducting archaeological research on family video materials from the last century, in order to obtain authorization for a foreigner to shoot a video in my hometown of Hangzhou, I embarked on a journey of searching the internet to find his contact information.

The making of anime "Paprika" (2006), focusing on its adaptation from Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel.

The director unexpectedly overheard stories about his mother’s family and decided to pick up a camera to explore a century-old history: Topa, a Tayal tribe that once lived in Sanxia but was displaced to Taoyuan’s Fuxing District due to Japanese rule. The main subjects of this documentary are descendants who are striving in their own ways to preserve the memory of Topa. Through their efforts, the connection between their lives and history is finally being brought back to light.

Philip Jones Griffith was a U.K. wartime photographer during the Vietnam War. He decides to reconstruct the Vietnam War from the point of view of the victims. A documentary that takes the form of an essay using photographs of victims who fell as they were treated worse than bugs.

In 2002, Ju Anqi made a film about a tour by the poet Shu through Xinjiang, the most western-lying, autonomous Uyghur province of China. All that we know about Shu is that he plays a poet who sends himself on a business trip - an absurd, satirical starting point that sets the tone for the film. For a variety of reasons, it was not until 2013 that Ju started editing the rough, lyrical material that he had shot in what is now a very restless Xinjiang: it's like an excellent wine that has had time to mature. Structured around 16 poems which he wrote on the road, Shu’s physically exhausting journey takes him along endless rocky roads, passing shabby inns and through impressive landscapes from one prostitute to the next. In its documentary authenticity, Poet on a Business Trip is also an historic document that exudes an atmosphere of loss, providing an unsentimental yet melancholy glimpse of a country in transition and a mirror for the existential irreversibility of time. (c) iffr.com