Don't Forget the Kids

On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips with her mother’s terminal illness.

Their parents are dead. They should be sad, but they can't cry. So they form a kick-ass band. This is the story of four 13-year-olds in search of their emotions.

Hoping to catch a girl's attention, high school students Ken and Adama cook up an ambitious plan. They plan a festival that combines film, theater, and rock music, and develop their project into a school road block. This plan however catches the attention of television stations and newspapers, and soon even the cops became involved in this teenage adventure.

Jonko runs a group of high school girls involved in paid dating. Raku is a street dancer. Togo was brought up in the US, and after being back in Japan for one year, wants to escape to New York. Their contact with the world of talent scouts and yakuza places them in danger over the span of one day and night in the Shibuya district of Tokyo.

Kuki is a veteran newspaper reporter who has been shuffled off to a book-development branch and finds escape in an illicit relationship with Rinko. Together they find the passion no longer present in their marriages.

Based on the "2.26 Incident", an attempted coup d'état in Japan 1936, launched by radical ultra-nationalist parts of the military. Several leading politicians were killed and the center of Tokyo was briefly held by the insurgents before the coup was suppressed.

Following the story of Ran, who confronts a mysterious organization by participating in a no-rules deathmatch after discovering her missing younger sister Yuzuki is involved in a crime. With danger at every corner, Ran must trade in her boxing gloves for brass knuckles. Will she save her sister?

A barkeeper saves a yakuza boss' life and thus makes his way up in the organization. However, his fear of nothing soon causes problems.

Director Ogata discovers a new female star in Koharu Tanaka, who works selling candy at a studio theater and she is given a part as a bit player. After the studio's top leading lady is embroiled in a scandal, Koharu is suddenly thrust into the limelight when she replaces her in a film and gains instant fame and fortune. But the going is not always easy, and she soon seeks help from unexpected quarters.

Summer 1978. High schooler Kurita is inspired by Star Wars, and films a spaceship scene on a 8mm camera together with his friend Ozawa. When the class is discussing a project for their school festival, Kurita's suggestion to make an SF movie ends up winning. Together with their movie fan classmate Sasaki, the boys start to plan a movie and manage to convince Yamashita, the prettiest girl in class, to star as the heroine. Over the summer vacation, the four shoot their movie, "Time Reverse", where an alien spaceship arrives on Earth to turn back time in order to save mankind from itself.

Based on the murder of nine street peddlers in the aftermath of the Great Kanto earthquake.

Our hero (voiced by rapper ACE COOL), called by a different name in each chapter of his life, becomes a J-pop idol, an outcast, a leader, and an oracle in this hundred-year chronicle spanning the past, present, and future. Through a chance encounter with a transfer student, he trains to become an idol, starting his search for self-identity and a journey toward greatness beyond superstardom. Written, directed, edited and entirely hand-drawn by newcomer Ryuya Suzuki over eighteen months, JINSEI (meaning “life” in Japanese) is an anime tour-de-force that announces Suzuki to the world as a bold new talent in independent animation.

Mari and Humi learn from their mother that their father has dementia on his 70th birthday. They help prepare their mother for his farewell and prepare themselves for the emotions to follow.

A youth drama depicting love stories between high school boys and girls that unfold on the Hankyu Railway Line and the streets of Kobe.

Professional boxer Sota Kusunoki has gained popularity for his fighting style, where he goes headlong into his opponents. However, years of fighting have taken their toll on his body, and he is forced to retire by a doctor's stoppage. He takes the opportunity of his retirement to marry his girlfriend, Sachiko, and start a new life, but he is completely useless in society and is made acutely aware of the harsh reality of his situation. One day, a mysterious man who claims to be a fan of Sota's receives an offer to fight in an underground martial arts tournament, where he will fight for a large sum of money and where his desires are thriving... The prospect of fighting once again revives his almost forgotten excitement, and his adrenaline surges as if to fill the emptiness in him. Will the madness and honesty of a man obsessed with fighting have a happy ending or a bad one?

After his father figure - a yakuza boss, is murdered, Azusa Moribe goes on a killing spree to exact revenge.

Momoko Watanabe—a student who, upon visiting a shrine in order to wish good luck on a friend of hers, witnesses a murder in the forest...and she knows the culprit! Unfortunately, she doesn't have it in her to tell anybody about it, and to make matters worse, said aforementioned friend gets accused of the murder.

Nagoya, 1983: Legendary filmmaker Koji WAKAMATSU decides to open a cinema – not least to show his own films. The Cinema Skhole quickly turns into a hot spot for local cinephiles. Junichi INOUE tells an empathetic and almost true story about motion picture enthusiasts in this loose sequel to Kazuya SHIRAISHI’s DARE TO STOP US.

In April 1941, months before the Pacific War begins, Japan’s brightest young elites, bureaucrats, military officers, and civilians, are secretly assembled at the Total War Research Institute. Tasked with simulating a conflict against the United States, they confront harsh realities through intense analysis.

In 1970s Japan, Satoshi Kirishima was a member of the "Scorpion Cell" of the East Asian Anti-Japan Armed Front, a recently formed left-wing extremist group. Wanted for a series of corporate bombings, he spent half a century evading capture while living under an assumed identity. What did he discover in the depths of his loneliness? What did he spend his life chasing?

Ko, a man in his late 30s, lives in the countryside with his wife and teenage son. Mitsuhiko, who runs a local car dealership, also stayed in his hometown. One day, their mutual friend Eisuke returns from a long military operation and their reunification brings back both pleasant and painful memories.

It is 1965, a time of rapid economic growth for Japan and also a time when the people called Sanka, a nomadic band of outcasts, were fading away. Having arrived at his father’s countryside estate from Tokyo to focus on preparing for his high school entrance exam, a lonely 15-year-old named Norio (Rairu Sugita) encounters three Sanka, first teenage Hana (Naru Komukai), then her father Shozo (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) and her grandmother. Taken under their wing and drawn to their simple and rugged lifestyle, Norio begins to spend his summer days fishing in the rivers and catching snakes in the bush for food. He also witnesses how they are discriminated against by people like his authoritarian father who rejects their illogical lifestyle. With bad blood already existing between Norio and his father, and a hopeless desire to become one with the Sanka, Norio is forced to confront the cruel reality of his age.

Seijiro, born into a family of renowned architects, returns home after studying in Mexico to celebrate his grandfather's 80th birthday. While his relatives gather, he recalls a trip to take photos of ruins in Japan with Lana, a photographer he met by chance.

School cleaner Nozomi Haruta was happy. She was supposed to marry her partner, her beloved, her soulmate, the handsome teacher Chitose Yokomizo, but when he secretly marries someone else, he ruins her dreams and breaks her heart. Also, maybe her mind? Seized by desperation, Nozomi photobombs his big wedding photograph by replacing the bride, steals the camera, and makes a run for it! Headlong into the path of a courier carrying Castella cakes! When she wakes up, she sees Chitose hovering over her, only it’s not him, but a being who calls himself Castella (as in the cake). For the next two weeks (the expiration date for the cakes), he will be Nozomi’s cake-based companion and help her get over her despair.

Two years have passed since the final battle with Sephiroth. Though Midgar, city of mako, city of prosperity, has been reduced to ruins, its people slowly but steadily walk the road to reconstruction. However, a mysterious illness called Geostigma torments them. With no cure in sight, it brings death to the afflicted, one after another, robbing the people of their fledgling hope.

A fantasy comedy in which Fumie Hosokawa and Ai Iijima play angels. The angel Elle arrives on earth completely naked. She had escaped from heaven to fall in love with a human man on earth. Pure and unpredictable, she attempts her first adventures on Earth one after another, taking care of her pure white feathers that rot if she stays on Earth for more than seven days. However, when God notices Elle's escape, he gives Hirolin, another angel, a "space transfer device" and tries to bring her back to heaven.

A con man and a would-be filmmaking crew force themselves into the lives of two grief-scarred young women. But nothing is as it seems.

One night in Tokyo, Leo, a young boxer, meets his first love, Monica, an imprisoned sex worker. Caught up in a drug-smuggling scheme, they find themselves pursued by a corrupt cop, a yakuza, his nemesis, and a female assassin.

A corrupt gambler in the Metropolitan Police Force finds himself thrown into a tangled case after an enigmatic FBI agent arrives in Tokyo to investigate the disappearance of a politician’s daughter.

When Honey's uncle gets kidnapped by the evil criminal gang known as "Panther Claw," she must use her magical powers of transformation to save him. Meanwhile the same crime group has been responsible for a number of other crime sprees across Tokyo. In the process, Honey teams up with the seemingly cold police woman Natsuko Aki and hot shot journalist Seiji Hayami as well as battle the four "claws" of the Panther Claw gang to save her uncle and the rest of the city.

In Okinawa, a down-and-out middle-aged yakuza underling named Shidara kidnaps and confines a high school girl named Yui, the daughter of a fellow yakuza’s mistress.

Eiji Akutsu is a newspaper reporter. He is working on unsolved case that took place 30 years ago. The case involved a group of people extorting several companies for money. The group sent cassette tapes to the companies. Eiji Akutsu comes across a mysterious cassette tape. Meanwhile, Toshiya Sone lives in Kyoto and runs a tailor shop. He discovers a cassette tape among his late father's possessions. He plays the cassette tape and hears his voice from his childhood days.

Keita discovers a missing boy in the woods and soon receives a mysterious videotape from his estranged mother.

A short film collection featuring the winning works of the "2nd Japan Horror Film Awards".