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"Where was he pushing the car toward? I don't know. Maybe, just for the sake of it. Sometimes, making films, I shoot just for the sake of it."

A visually impaired woman in her 50s and an 18-year-old girl walk the Camino de Santiago. The older woman, Jae-han, is a masseuse who can only make out the dim outlines of things. She is accompanied by a girl named Da-hee. Jae-han dreams of presenting her own style of flamenco in front of the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela after completing the pilgrimage. However, the journey, which began with a vague longing, turns out to be much more difficult than either had expected.

Under intense fire from the Russian forces, Ukrainian civilians-turned-soldiers document their first experiences on the battlefield using smartphones and cameras to show the do-or-die reality of war.

Picnic Cat is a social enterprise that makes and delivers lunchbox meals. It was set up eight years ago by resource-strapped youngsters and grownups to help young people who have opted out of the basic education system. From a small shop making monthly revenues of less than 10 million Korean Won in the spring of 2014, the business grew its revenue to more than 50 million Won in three years. What was happening to the folks working in Picnic Cat in those years? A Corner Shop is the story of how the individuals working in Picnic Cat oscillated between livelihood and humanhood as their shop grew up with them.

Jomon Period. This word that even elementary school students know if they are Japanese. However, the more I know the actual situation, the more mysteries there are ... In fact, most of them are mysteries. Although there are a huge number of strange shaped objects such as clay figurines that seem to support the theory of aliens flying to Earth, what they are, even now in the 21st century. It's still a mystery without anyone reaching the truth. The film approaches the core of its secrets through interviews with archaeologists, cultural figures, artists, and those who are passionate about the Jomon period.

After studying abroad in Cape Town, a young filmmaker returns to Chongqing, navigating the complexity of modern life in China and fragile family ties, where grief, memory, and longing surface amid distance, silence, and change.

A documentary film about the Yawata Steel Works.

Camera person unknown, 1971, B&W, silent, 18 min. Courtesy of Kumiko Matsuzawa. This film documents actions performed for World Uprising by Taii Ashizawa and Taku Furusawa, who worked together as Satsuma Workshop. According to the art magazine Bijutsu Techō, Ashizawa acting on behalf of the Interstellar Vibration Association and conducted an Earth Sound Transmission Ritual consisting of three parts. In Ritual One, four people respond to the four fundamental elements (fire, water, earth, air) and emanate earth sounds through psychokinesis. In Ritual Two, the sound of the earth is transmitted via radio waves. Ritual Three shows the sound of the earth extinguished in a fire on an altar, and reproduced and transmitted into outer space through the wisdom of a fire deity. The film documents Ritual One, as well as Taku Furusawa is performing Ritual One / EVENT at the same site and going into convulsions.

Kelvin Kyung Kun Park’s Invitation to a Peaceful City, poetically mediates on the various forms of cultural resistance and simple quotidian ways of making do, that a variety of displaced Korean villagers have made after being first displaced by the Japanese and then the US Air Force. Park’s work sensitively speaks about the conflict that has arisen between the locals who are now tied into the economy of the base and others who still live under its shadow.

Students near the Shaolin temple engaged in a simple yet rigorous exercise of rehearsal.

A remarkable tale unfolds as a spirited and lively 94-year-old grandmother, known as "A Blooming Flower from Zhongli," unexpectedly rises to become Taiwan's cherished internet sensation. Unleashing her vibrant personality, she effortlessly transitions into a captivating comedian on screen. Her whimsical video, where she charmingly imitates a rap artist, spreads like wildfire, propelling her into the spotlight, including an invitation to perform for the Taoyuan Dementia Care Association. By a twist of fate, she collaborates harmoniously with her community to produce the cinematic spectacle "Grandpa Grandma Warriors vs. Zombies."

Deceptively real, and even described by Tony Rayns as a 'ciné-vérité essay'. Entirely in the tradition of the better mockumentary, the news crew making the film plays a decisive role. Before the grand hype of commercial reality television, Riju Go made it clear what the consequences are of penetrating too deeply into the private world of the person followed. A beautiful portrait of an absolute loner.

After a massive earthquake razed a Chinese city to the ground, thousands of parents who lost their children are encouraged to give a new birth so that they can move on with their lives. AFTER THE RAIN follows two of these families for over a decade. Haunted by fear, resentment, and unspeakable grief, the families find hope beyond their intergenerational trauma is hard to build.

On Yonaguni Island, the westernmost island of Japan, there is a language in danger of disappearing. How far can we take the language, culture and history that are being quietly forgotten at the edge of Japan? A semi-documentary fantasy full of life force.

Naomi Kawase's documentary about Nishii Kazuo, a photo critic. He is the last chief editor for the Camera Mainichi magazine, rushing through his time with Araki Nobuyoshi and Moriyama Daido as provocative artists in the photograph world.

The Great Leap Forward of the People's Republic of China was an economic and social campaign led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1958 to 1962. Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to reconstruct the country from an agrarian economy into a communist society through the formation of people's communes.

Is this my body? Who am I? As the carrier of spirit and will, how does a woman’s body struggle, jostle, collide, and merge with all things other than themselves? The body seems to follow the mind as merely its shell or tool. However, the body does possess memory.

Shot by Chang Chao-Tang and cinematographer Christopher Doyle, The Boat Burning Festival captures the ceremony worshipping Wangye（王爺）, the local god of plague, held every three years in Sucuo Village（蘇厝） in Tainan（台南）, Taiwan. Chang timed the work to "Ommadawn", a Celtic-inspired progressive rock album by Mike Oldfield. Defying genre conventions and deviating stylistically from television or ethnographic documentary, the film testifies to the tense and complex coexistence of traditional rites, local folklore, and discourses about modernisation and identity in 1970s Taiwan.

With the opening up of the economy, grassroots democracy has come. But since the land is owned by the state, the local government actually has absolute control. The so-called democratically elected village chief quickly learns that his role is to cooperate with the government in using land to develop the economy. Power-to-money transactions are open secrets. Due to the uneven economic development in the villages, each has a different story, but the use of land for profit is a constant theme. The filming location is a rural village in the outside Beijing. Less of focus is how villages elect than the mutation after. Faced with huge land assets and overseeing relationships between land, power, economics, social systems, how does a hard-working, upright peasant conduct himself? This film documents the pain: the experience of soul sublimation and degeneration. We see 'birth defects' in this "democracy" — one without checks and balances, grafted onto autocracy.

Extensive behind the scenes documentary chronicling the making of Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack.

Haneda Sumiko, documentary filmmaker who was born in Dalian, Manchuria in 1926 and was there to experience the conclusion of the Pacific War. Following her previous work , she revisits Dalian and Lushun, places where she spent her formative years. Lushun has served as an important naval port in modern times, and in 2009 was finally fully opened to foreigners. Haneda joined a tour organized as part of that opening, and delves into memoires as she visits the house where she grew up and the school she attended.

A music documentary that traced the trajectory of the authentic real power band "The Golden Cups" born from Yokohama / Honmoku where the US military base exists in 1966. The testimonies of the members who look back at that time and the interviews of people who respect them such as Takeshi Kitano, Kiyoshiro Imokano, Yukiyama Sword, and live images at Honmoku where original members resurrected after 31 years since dissolution. Moreover, it is spelled with valuable materials such as a photograph in which the appearance of the "Honmoku Golden Cup" store miraculously was recorded, and a performance scene of regular TV program R & B heaven since 1968.

In a country ruled by the Liberal Democratic Party, running on austerity and neoliberal ambitions, for most of its postwar years, gender and economic inequalities have become increasingly acute in Japan. Takashi Nishihara, a filmmaker who has been following the youth protests in Japan notices that there is one party that seems to be raising issues of gender and economic in the political sphere, the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), a party about to enter its hundredth year and consistently burdened by its historical connotations. Though an outsider of the party, Nishihara gained unprecedented access to the JCP and driven by his interest in the younger party members who find hope in the JCP, the resulting documentary goes beyond party politics and observes the current grassroots leftist movements in Japan. It also becomes witness to the larger and deep-seated patriarchal system that continues to quell momentums of hope.

Kyogen actor Nomura Mansai's eldest son, Yuki (3 years old at the time), was chosen to play the role of a child monkey in the kyogen play Utsubo Saru, and together with Mansai's father, Mansaku, the three generations of the family made their first appearance on the stage. The first half of the programme is a documentary following Yuki as he trains for the traditional performance, and his father and grandfather as they strictly instruct him.

Short by Motoharu Jonouchi.

The heart-rending story of a family profoundly impacted by not one but two nuclear tragedies: Hiroshima and Fukushima.

The last breath of life in a distant land.

A new phenomenon of authentic Chinese rap has taken the internet by storm. But behind the unprecedented gains in popularity, there is a struggle for freedom of speech. Rappers are trying to figure out what they still can and cannot do after new censorship is announced.

After my grandfather 's Baek-su (age 99’s birthday party) banquet, asking me to write an autobiography for him. Two years later, he passed away and left his favor as homework to me. I discovered the history of the past that I could not associate with his name. As a filmmaker, I frequently attended burials that were far from my life. I have been living in the United States for a while, and I have often come to think about the country and nationality.

At the age of 93, my dear grandma tried to commit suicide. I am so afraid that she might go away, but I am spending time with her so as to make our farewell more beautiful and warmer.

The account of a journey through an imaginary city, filmed along China’s new trade routes. Like the fictionalized Marco Polo from Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities”, the traveller in this film talks of worlds that resemble familiar places but follow their own, sometimes seemingly incredible rules. The observations condense into a meditation about the nature of cities and the transformation of the concept of globalization.

This film documents the 11th Beijing Independent Film Festival in 2014, from the preparations before the opening ceremony to the process of its forced cancellation, the event which spurred the Cinema on the Edge series. The footage used for the film was captured by audience members, local artists, invited directors and special guests, festival volunteers and workers, as well as journalists and members of the media. It is a film produced by the collective.

Five years ago, a Korean opera singer started a children's choir in a slum in India. Frustrated by the lack of support from the parents of his choir children, he decides to train the parents to sing for a joint concert. But it may be the toughest challenge of his life.

Archive / Lee Guang-Hui is a 30-minute compilation film assembled from footage independently preserved by Chang Chao-Tang between 1975 and 1979 during his work as a television cameraman. Documenting the final years of Lee Guang-Hui—an Indigenous Taiwanese former Japanese soldier who lived in isolation in Indonesia for nearly three decades after World War II—the film traces his return to Taiwan, brief media exposure, and death. Neither a conventional documentary nor a completed historical account, the work functions as an unfinished archive, juxtaposing official rituals, media spectacle, and moments of silence to expose the erasure of subjectivity and the unresolved fractures of postwar history.

Documentary on the Tangshan earthquake made for the 30-year memorial.

Two Indonesian poets meet at Tainan Park, using daytime experiences to craft poetry. Inspired by encounters and emotions, their creations take shape through night-time chanting, imagination, and action. Taman-taman (Park) unfolds a journey resembling an ancient fable, with untold stories hidden in the endless night. The storytellers become integral parts of the narratives as well.

The documentary starts with a diva of a tragic family history related to a history of migration. The rare archival footage reanimates her history reverberating with the current world crisis. Sound of Nomad: Koryo Arirang is a testimonial – a witness to injustice and tragedy, but it is also a declaration of survival – a survival that is not static but transformative – not brittle but fluid. The trains that displace, the deserts that separate form one harsh horizon – a historical limit – but within that limit, against it and across it are people, are a culture, not escaping but flourishing unofficially, with the affective majesty of a melody, a rhythm, an Arirang

The Red Race recounts the stories of several Chinese children-gymnasts who (are forced to) dream of becoming famous athletes. The 6-year-olds at the Lu Wan District Youth Athletic School in Shanghai, trained relentlessly in the hopes they will one day be gold medalists, provide the subjects for a sometimes harsh, yet intimate portrait.

In June, 1993 , the gravestone of Hsu Ching-Lan was finally found in Liuchangli by his brother after 40 years of searching. Hsu was killed by the KMT during the 'White Terror,' the organized suppression of leftist activities in Taiwan in the 1950s.

‘Udumbara’ is the name of a band created by Monk Hyegwang and his past colleagues working together in nightclubs in the 1970s and 1980s. Now in their 60s or 50s, the members’lives have been highly dramatic. This film narrates their past in their own voice, while following their current life. They have to work to support their own life, but their passion for music remains strong.

A making-of documentary that follows veteran writer/director Sadao Nakajima as he returns to the director’s chair to bring the jidaigeki Love’s Twisting Path (2018) to the screen.

This timely documentary explores the singer's remarkable journey from Cantopop superstar to outspoken political activist, putting her life and career on the line in support of Hong Konger's struggle to maintain their political freedom.

Documentary on Japan-Korea relations

Through thoughtful letters from prison, an anarchist incarcerated since 1980 reflects on his radical past.

In this tender and inspired short, the director sets delicate sand imagery to a conversation with her grandmother who experienced WWII in Kobe. -JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film

At a time when the USSR and the USA fervently vied to develop nuclear arms, the mass media buzzed with terms inspired by nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll such as the “Daigo Fukuryu Maru Incident,” the “ash of death,” “radioactive tuna,” and “radioactive rain,” and nuclear testing continued, Japan, the only nation to have suffered an atom-bomb attack, felt massive anxiety. “What is the radioactive ash of death?” “What effect does it have on living creatures?” Against the background of the era, the film scientifically describes the terrors of radioactivity with the cooperation of many scientists, physicians and research institutions.

The Ainu are the indigenous people of Japan. Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan, was previously called Ainumosir, or land of the Ainu. Ainu traditions are facing a critical situation; the latest survey revealed that the Ainu population is less than 20,000 people in Hokkaido, and UNESCO has recognized the language as ‘critically endangered.’ This documentary was filmed in Biratori town in Hokkaido, where many people with Ainu roots still live. It is also known as the hometown of the late Shigeru Kayano, who contributed greatly to the field of research on Ainu culture.

A moving image work from director Kaori Oda.

What does it mean to care for a being that has nothing to do with you? How can we explain spending one’s youth in a rural mountain valley, enduring hardship to care for wild animals that, unlike pets, will never grow close to humans?

Twenty years ago, at eighteen, Seonyoung suffered a severe spinal injury in a fall. Her family sold their home and shop in Incheon to cover medical bills, moving to her father's hometown of Cheongju. There, tragedy compounded: her father struggled with alcoholism, her mother's health failed from hard labor, and her brother developed a mental illness after a traumatic military incident. Now, Seonyoung studies for the civil service exam, hoping to pass and finally return to Incheon to reclaim the life and memories left behind.​

A lively community of Christians inhabit Fangshan, a remote rural town in Jiangsu Province. At the start of the millennium, a church was built there with support of local inhabitants' relatives from Taiwan. On Sundays, up to 900 people gather to worship, while spending most of their days maintaining a modest living as farmers. Their faith governs how they handle family conflicts, illnesses and other difficulties. Still, they must contend with constraining forces in their community, from ancient folk religious practices to laws forbidding evangelism.

Leading Chinese Sixth Generation filmmaker Jia Zhangke returns home to Fenyang in Shanxi province after winning the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival for Still Life (2006). The experiences of his childhood, the people he grew up with, and the changing landscape of his home town gave Jia the inspiration to make his first films. The documentary forms a poignant inquiry into the past of the director's life and Chinese society at the same time.

Don't forget to have poetry when making a living. This is romance. Even if you live in a sheepfold, you have a holy smile like a baby. This is romance. Listening to folk songs from the workers' hometown at the construction site in Shenzhen is touching. Once the song stops, you become eager for it. This singing series is also called "Sharing Hometown" and “Lingering Songs". You see, the eyes of the singing workers are shining, because we are all close to the Buddha.

An old dog is living in a vacant lot. Camera approaches the villagers to reveal the dog. While people share their memories, memory and reality are intertwined to form an atmosphere.