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After 30 years of cold war, Taiwan and China finally opened cross-strait trade and tourism in 1980. However, through decades of political and educational vilification of their counterparts by the KMT and CCP, and despite close economic and cultural ties, what lies beneath the diplomatic relations is a disconnect and mistrust that cannot be denied. KE is a failed business in Taiwan who hopes to start over as a 'Taiwanese Expat' in Shenzheng, China with a Taiwanese company. Lili, a laborer from China, meets her Taiwanese husband online and moves to Taiwan in hopes of a better life. Both KE and Lili cross the straits in hope of achieving what they cannot find in their homeland. But how much do they really know about that country across the straits?

In the mountains of Northern Thailand lies a boarding school. The students come from different tribes in the area and live together with their Thai teacher, grow their own crops and cook their own meals while continuing their education. The biggest question on their mind, having spent all their lives in the mountainside, is where the rivers running down the hills end. If they pass the final exams their reward is a trip to the end of the river, to the ocean itself. The children are poor, some orphans, and most of them only speak their tribe's language, but all try their best to pass the exams to be able to take the long-awaited trip. This trip is not only a journey from the children's villages to the ocean but also a journey that symbolizes the change from childhood to adulthood.

Yu-rye Kim, she began studying literature late in her life and debuted as a poet at 67. Now 86, she still carves her life through poetry and recitation. Her unwavering creativity fills each day with the truth of a life fully lived.

A documentary capturing the recording process of singer Yano Akiko's 1992 cover album, Super Folk Song.

In 2006, Samson Miyamoto, a toy store owner in Nemuro, Hokkaido, founded "New Nemuro Pro Wrestling" to promote his love of wrestling and revitalize his hometown. His wrestlers were local customers and dairy farmers, many of whom had been bullied or were withdrawn. In 2019, Miyamoto was diagnosed with a serious illness. He promised a comeback for his October retirement match but passed away the following year. Three years later, after the COVID-19 pandemic, the former members reunited in Tokyo’s Shinkiba ring, honoring Samson’s legacy.

In this film, Chie Mikam looks not at the well-documented controversies surrounding U.S. military bases in Okinawa, but at the quiet expansion of Japan’s own Self-Defense Forces there.

An intimate 7-year journey of a family struggling to overcome past wounds of reverse migration (from Canada to Korea) begins when the director's little sister decides to be an un-wed single mom. The little sister decides to raise the child in Canada as she never felt welcome in her parent's homeland, South Korea. The lives of parents, intertwined with Korea's modern history is revealed, while family members try to come together to face the challenges of raising a new baby outside of the traditional family form. What starts out as the director's personal journey of re-discovering the lives of family members and self, evolves into broader themes of cultural differences, identity, and belonging.

Just after midnight on 10 March 1945, the US launched an air-based attack on eastern Tokyo; continuing until morning, the raid left more than 100,000 people dead and a quarter of the city eradicated. Unlike their loved ones, Hiroshi Hoshino, Michiko Kiyooka and Minoru Tsukiyama managed to emerge from the bombings. Now in their twilight years, they wish for nothing more than recognition and reparations for those who, like them, had been indelibly harmed by the war – but the Japanese government and even their fellow citizens seem disinclined to acknowledge the past.

Peng Zuqiang chronicles the final two years his uncle Nan spends under the same roof as his elderly parents. Born with physical challenges, Nan requires constant care. Their world largely unfolds within the confines of their modest Chinese apartment, with only brief excursions for groceries or Nan's therapy sessions.

Besides being an excellent showcase of Chiaki Mayumura's talents, this film is a brilliant melding of documentary and fiction.

A yaksha gets revenge on the devadas who insulted him with the help of his diamond finger. Told through traditional khon dancing.

Last May, 100,000 South Americans at a BTS(K-pop superstar group)'s concert in Sao Paulo passionately sang along to the songs in Korean. In opposite parts of the world though the number is smaller, there are musicians in Korea who share a passion for Brazilian music and sing in Portugese. Now begins the story of these Korean Brazilian musicians.

Third part of Gina Kim’s VR trilogy on US military comfort women in South Korea. In 1969, a 500-unit brothel, recruiting women from across the country, was established for the US military in Kunsan. Viewers traverse this uncanny deserted town, guided by the ghosts, sounds, and voices from its past.

A Lean Soul examines the life and works of Taiwanese novelist Qi Deng Sheng. The filmmakers were able to have in-depth interviews with not only the writer's closest friends and relatives but also the notoriously camera-shy protagonist himself. The film vividly dramatizes many passages from his intensely autobiographical works of fiction. The result is an intimate and candid portrait of one of the most important and controversial Taiwanese writers.

Politics meets personal survival, in this urgent, courageous and poetic bricolage diary that traces an exiled filmmaker’s escape from violent repression to the West via Thailand – only to face new forms of onerous control. Socrates Saint-Wulfstan Drakos is not the real name of the director who made Unerasable! And when the film is over, everyone in the audience will understand why.

Our Conversation Through Video Call, Leading Her into the Realm of "Force"

Japanese documentary about the world tour of legendary Korean Pon-chak singer Epaksa.

Kanami is a TV director. Her pet Natsu recently died due to a disease. Kanami begins to shoot a film about dogs after her movie director friend suggests the idea. For her movie, she visits an animal shelter and a shelter for dogs rescued from the area around Fukushima. She is touched by the people who work diligently to save the animals.

The film opens with the words of Taebaek's last miners: "I had to earn a living." These are the first words, spoken over the shot of a cage descending endlessly into a mine—the place that the miners of the soon-to-be-closed Jangseong Mining Station call hell. They began working out of poverty, needing to make a living somehow. Though they planned to quit after three days, they ended up staying for over 30 years, and in all that time, they saw nothing good.

One of Hu Jie's 'Farmers Working in the City' films. The city is developing rapidly, with tall buildings and highways. Behind this bustling city, there is such a group of people. They come from the countryside. Maybe they are not dressed well, or they have only finished elementary school, but they work hard with their own work. The piece of prosperity pays its youth and sweat. (Shot between 1997 and 1998.)

When a massive Chinese factory complex attempts a high-stakes expansion in rural Ethiopia, three women in search of prosperity have their faith in industrialization tested to the limit. Filmed over four years with singular access, Made in Ethiopia lifts the curtain on China’s historic but misunderstood impact on Africa, and explores contemporary Ethiopia at a moment of profound crisis. The film was awarded the Jury Special Mention at Tribeca Festival.

This documentary follows one of the creators of the japanese dance Butoh, Kazuo Ohno, 95, and his son, Yoshito Ohno.

Here is an actor, one who has been asked to dwell in the perilous gap between text and image. In the voids where traces of the past have been erased by an unknown error, she begins to assemble her own script.

In the majestic tropical island of Palawan, three environmental crusaders confront murder, betrayal and political corruption in this thrilling documentary about land defenders battling to save and preserve paradise in the Philippines.

Kawaguchi's Aether follows on from his earlier film Air (1992), in which he enlarged 8 mm film material, breaking down the image to the level of individual grains and transforming it into a painting. Now he replicates the experiment through a different medium: a digital camera captures a girl walking away in slow motion, and artificial intelligence transforms the enlarged image, finding patterns in the visual noise and thousands of faces in the blurred image. The immortalization of a single happy moment is transformed into a meditation on digital visuality.

July 27th, 1976 - a day the people of Tangshan will never forget. When that fateful day ended, tens of thousands had been killed, and the lives of the survivors would be changed forever. No public official, no expert, nor anyone among the seismological personnel - regardless of what they were doing that day - should ever forget. History will always remember the twilight of that day.

French musician Étienne de la Sayette has built a distinctive musical world traversing jazz, Ethiopian music, Korean traditional music, and experimental music. In Korea, he gained attention for reinterpreting singer Bae Ho's music. Recently, he formed trio "Tako Toki," experimenting with new sounds using instruments made from industrial waste and recycled materials. He seeks to restore the senses that become music's source through repetitive labor of caring for family, animals, and gardens, aiming to practice harmonious coexistence of human and non-human beings through music.

Video Footages of various different perspectives on the bus that took 2 years to collect. Before combining those perspectives together, upon the same temporal field to recreate the space of a bus…

Documentary made by Toho for the Masterworks reissue of all of its Kurosawa films. This one focuses on "The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail" (1945).

After working as a reporter and an assistant at a radio station, Watanabe Yoshimitsu, former leader of the bosozoku gang Black Emperor, returned to his old stomping grounds and began to make a film about bosozoku. At the time, he was 21. The teenage members of the bosozoku group, also known as " Thunder " would get into their revamped motorbikes and cars and race around the city. With the police as their enemies, they ran from patrol cars and did other defiant acts. They would put on outlandish clothing and, as a result of fights with rival groups, were very loyal to other members of their own gang. Every Saturday, they would cruise around, vanish and reappear throughout the entire night with no particular goal. However on 1 December 1978, because of provisions in the new highway transport law, the end was at hand for their " season of running wild. " The film shows them simply continuing to run wild on this last night before the law is to take effect.

A vivid portrait of a generation of Hong Kongers committed to creating a new more democratic Hong Kong. Schoolboy Joshua Wong dedicates himself to stopping the introduction of National Education. Whilst former classmate Ma Jai fights against political oppression on the streets and in the courts. Catapulting the viewer on to the streets of Hong Kong and into the heart of the action. The viewer is confronted with Hong Kong's oppressive heat, stifling humidity and air thick with dissent. Filmed over 18 months this is a kaleidoscopic, visceral experience of their epic struggle.

Serial murder examines how seemingly rational choices can perpetuate inequality, challenging viewers to reconsider workplace structures and their societal implications. The Footprints of the Invisible Man Walking on the Sand explores diverse mourning processes, documenting memories, testimonies, and funerals of those for whom death is as close as life. Chores of one's own revisits a construction site 31 years later, exploring the impact of a young worker's death.

Filmed over 17 years across Southern China, this remarkable film is an intimate and heart-wrenching portrait of Li Ermao, a transgender migrant worker, who performs in clubs looking for love and acceptance. Living as a “ladyboy” with a string of boyfriends, she faces repeated encounters of prejudice and aggression with equal measures of resilience and vulnerability. With a flair for the dramatic and her budding career as a popstar, Ermao’s story takes many dramatic twists and surprising turns as she moves between the urban and the rural, searching for identity and fighting for a better life.

This is a film about seven artists. It's also a film about seven people who are mentally handicapped. In the course of this touching film, we discover how art may provide a route to the human interior.

Despite the increasing number of people entering the field of documentary filmmaking, historical subjects are less popular due to limited materials and the difficulty in handling them. Hu Jie has chosen to stay in this field and work hard. "I know that shooting these historical subjects is very dangerous, so how can you ask others to do it? It can only be their choice after they have seen your work." Since 2014, due to health reasons, Hu Jie has not been actively making documentaries. This year, in response to an invitation from the Lung Ying-tai Cultural Foundation, he still provided the film "A Sidelight of the 1968 Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement." Over the past three years, he has primarily engaged in printmaking, producing about 70 to 80 pieces, in addition to many small print bookplates.

The first image DVD of Misaki Soejima, who is currently a hot topic as Komitsu, is here! Although she is only 19 years old, her hobby is collecting handcuffs, and she exudes a unique aura. She will charm all men with her pheromones!

Gulu is a village of Yi people, located beyond the cliff's edge in Sichuan, China, there is no electricity. The villagers used the lianas and Heaven-Ladders to climb up and down the cliffs like a monkey. They had hardly contact with the outside world until a mule-horse-trail out of the rocks in 2004. The substitute teacher Shen is the only teacher in the Gulu Primary School and has worked over 20 years. Shen would really like to become a real teacher, but he has just a middle school education. One day, the young man Bao who called himself 'Don Quixote' came to Gulu because of the lianas and Heaven-Ladders. He felt, Gulu was just his utopia. Since then Shen's fate has changed dramatically.

This documentary is about musician Jang Beom-joon from the band Busker Busker, Superstar K second runner up and hit maker of its 1st and 2nd albums.

Shot over six years, this is a personal story of a woman whose father executed for the world famous heinous crimes. Matsumoto Rika’s father was the guru of Aum Shinrikyo, the religious cult responsible for the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 – mass murder that shocked Japan to the core. Rika was brought up with the cult. She has been exposed to discrimination and exclusion from society. Even though her trauma has driven her to the brink of suicide at times, she struggles to carve out her own life and identity. She eventually takes on a new challenge to become recognized not as "his daughter" but as "Matsumoto Rika" herself.

Collaboration DVD release from gothic & lolita brand "BABY, THE STAR SHINE BRIGHT" and popular magazine "Gothic & Lolita Bible." Comes with a collaboration tote bag. Features BABY, THE STAR SHINE BRIGHT collection, magazine model's private coordinates, hair and makeup for Gothic & Lolita style, and more.

On September 11, 2018, the movie "Retsunami Kakuon Gunrushi 911” - a collection of unreleased footage of G.I.S.M. - screened for just one day at Tachikawa Cinema City, Tokyo, selling out over 700 seats in hours. Released physically on September 11, 2024 worldwide, the film is a one-hour piece of shocking footage carefully selected from the band’s legendary visual archive, shot and directed by Junji Yasuda.

Kenji Murakami seeks out legendary wildman director Kenji Onishi and arranges a meeting with director Yoko Oguchi. The meeting turns unexpectedly intense...

Documentary about making of "Three Tears in Borneo".

In the maze of monochrome images, as the consciousness awakens in confusion one night, a young male student's confession reveals how he was slapped in the face by an adult, who's his girlfriend's mother, and it has become his trauma that has kept him up all night for the past several months.

In his third film on life and work in the (once) heavily wooded north of China, Yu Guangyi (Survival Song) follows the lonely San Liangzi (46), who for the past ten years has been in love with a woman who doesn’t like men much. Intimate and revealing, but never rude. A moving and human portrait of a group of unemployed and above all lonely men who stayed behind when their wives moved to the city looking for work. They worked in the timber industry in the province of Heilongjiang, but deforestation has taken its toll. For instance, we see 46-year-old San Liangzi. Twelve years ago, he divorced his wife and became unemployed. For 10 years, he has had an eye on Wang Meizi, the only unmarried woman in the area. But the love is not mutual.

Since the death of her husband, Kok, Nia has inexplicably developed Alzheimer's disease. She had the opportunity to return to her old house, where she had lived with her husband for many years, to visit her closest friend Saw, whose house was next door. They spent a long time seated at the dining table in Saw's home, talking about their health and the life they have lived and lost.

In 1964, a chemical factory in Niigata Prefecture dumped mercury into the Agano River, the beginning of a manmade tragedy that would affect locals for years to come. Mercury poisoning led to high occurrences of Minamata disease, a neurological syndrome that causes severe physical and psychological ailments and death. Sato Makoto and his crew of seven spent three years in Niigata documenting the life and thoughts of locals.

In the Japanese town of Ushimado, the shortage of labor is a serious problem due to its population’s rapid decline. Traditionally, oyster shucking has been a job for local men and women, but for a few years now, some of the factories have had to use foreigners in order to keep functioning. Hirano oyster factory has never employed any outsiders but finally decides to bring in two workers from China. Will all the employees get along?

Japanese photojournalist Kuwabara Shisei boards a flight to Korea. Since his first visit in 1964 as a 27-year-old, Shisei has spent six decades documenting the turbulence of Korea's modern history: Cheonggyecheon, military camp towns, the Vietnam War deployment, and democracy movements. Now elderly, he returns, believing this might be his final journey. He carries a mission: to revisit the places and people that defined his life’s work. The film follows the photographer’s footsteps back into the heart of these historical sites.

In many parts of Tokyo redevelopment is afoot, and the cityscape continues to change at a rapid pace. While on the surface Japan is easy to live in, many Japanese still feel a sense of emptiness in the aftermath of the shattered economic bubble, a condition that prevents them from making a change. Autumn 2006. Eight "normal" young women living in Tokyo--eight women now in the middle of change.