August in Blue

In a near-future Japanese city bracing for a devastating earthquake, a group of teenage friends navigate personal struggles and fractured bonds amid rising tension.

Elsa, a doctor, hides from the world the fact that she can see the dead and help them cross to the other side. Convinced that her gift leads to rejection, she has given up on love, retreating into solitude and her work. That is, until she meets Oscar - a dead man who doesn’t know he’s dead...

A chef's life is disrupted by a chime that brings with it an increasing sense of dread.

The daily grind of the elderly cleaner of a Japanese bathhouse is disrupted when a young man attempts suicide.

Takashi Shimizu's newest film is about a mysterious cassette tape containing a melody. People who hear this melody gradually begin to hum it themselves and become involved in a mysterious incident. What is the mystery behind this melody ?

After travelling around the world, Nina and Mathieu arrive on an island to spend midsummer with friends. As nature and time slowly take their place, they have to confront the emptiness of desire.

JH is a person like the others but one evening he meets his other self.

Yuri is a sculptor. Since the death of his wife, 17 years ago, he has been working hard to re-fabricate her. He misses only one element, the eyes. When he falls on Andreas it is an evidence, he has his eyes. Yuri will be stroked by this meeting and what it represents: the end of his quest.

Shimada, a former Self-Defense Force member, suffers from severe PTSD following the loss of a comrade in a firefight in war-torn South Sudan, a tragedy covered up by the government. Shining a light into Shimada's solitary life in illegal arms manufacturing is a job as an apprentice at a traditional Japanese fireworks factory. There he begins crafting fireworks alongside the master artisan and fellow craftsmen who embrace fireworks that illuminate people's peaceful lives. Yet, parallel to Shimada's journey, his comrades-in-arms with unresolved feelings team up on radical acts to expose the government's cover-up, escalating tensions and pulling Shimada back into the darkness he thought he'd left behind.

Ezra has recently been living in a village marked by war. He meets Odelia, who works in a dyery. She has to deliver a sheet outside the village. He takes her on a scooter.

The film centres on Taro, an aimless indie filmmaker who gets convinced by Yuki, his girlfriend and financial sponsor, to attend a film festival in Beppu. There he meets the bubbly drifter actress Miki. Part travelogue, part self-reflexive comedy, the dynamic that follows this encounter delivers an ironic and realistic spin on Before Sunrise (1995), depicting two souls wandering around in search of life’s meaning.

A short film that delves into the intricacies of gay dating in Japan. Aoki, a solitary Japanese gay man, spends a night by himself in a hotel, seeking companionship through a gay dating app. His interactions with Mori leave him feeling hollow and dissatisfied, leading him to ponder the difficulties of discovering love and acceptance as a gay man in Japan. This poignant film explores the human condition and the universal longing for love, acceptance, and connection.

In Tokyo, an unfulfilled romantic encounter and sudden disappearance leave Seiji struggling to make sense of what never happened and what might have been.

Norio and his girlfriend, Mari Tanabe, have been dating for three years. They lived a peaceful life until one summer day, where Norio comes home to experience a peculiar sensation. The moment he sees the strong sun rays shining into his apartment, he realizes that Mari isn’t there. Instead, he finds an unfamiliar-looking woman who tells him that she is here to live with him. The eerie pale-skinned woman then introduces herself as Mari..

In a situation where location shooting was difficult due to the Corona pandemic, four omnibus horror films that could be shot in the school were planned as the graduation project for the technical area students. Four horrific events with completely different themes and stories take place.

Near-future Tokyo. Kou, through the help of his high school best friend, finds a surprising way to express his mounting frustration at the insidious forces of commercialism that are forcing out the neighbors he cares most about. Initially inspired by a prank that the writer-director Neo Sora (The Chicken, 2020) had pulled on him in his childhood, a sense of warm nostalgia and cold, material reality intermingle to tell a tale set in the not-so-distant future about disappearing spaces and the forces of policing and gentrification that drills this process forward.