Movies: Jun Murakami

Set towards the end of World War II, Nomura (Masatoshi Nagase) is a writer who is in despair. A woman works in bar and is a former prostitute. Many years ago, her father sold her to a brothel due to the family's severe financial hardships. The writer...

Shinichi Tsuda, a Naoki Prize winning author, is working to publish his newest story. It revolves around Tsuyama, a driver for a call girl business in Toyama Prefecture, who comes across a mysterious counterfeit bill and has his life targeted by unde...

Action actor Tateishi Daisuke who struggles with loneliness after suffering a traumatic experience due to an accident during filming. One day, he comes across a senior high school girl Ayumi who is being harassed consistently by Chinese brokers and t...

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....

Kako, a 16-year-old high school girl, goes to a mixer pretending to be 22. While there, she meets Kouta who at first has a very intimidating aura. But once he saves her from an awkward situation, she wants to know more about him as does he. That is u...

Tatsuhiko Shiratori works as a scout, recruiting girls to work in the adult entertainment business. He movies to Yokohama from Shinjuku, Tokyo. He comes into conflict with Masaki Taki who is the CEO of a scout company....

Set at the edge of the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, with its beautiful scenic views, the film revolves around two women from different backgrounds who develop a friendship, and how they begin to influence and change each other’s live...

An old couple, their only son, the son's wife, a young man and his lover live peacefully in a village. Then, a terrifying earthquake strikes that causes a nearby nuclear station to explode. The residents must evacuate, but the family lives on a farm,...

A successful businessman and his alcoholic wife attempt to piece together their unhappy lives and shattered marriage. Little do Nagai and Akira know that their precarious relationship will soon be transformed by a stranger, the enigmatic Keechie....

In the early 1200s, Dogen brought Chinese Zen philosophy to Japan, and established the Japanese Zen school of Buddhism. He taught that a person was capable of realizing Buddhahood within himself, by way of Zazen. Zazen is extended hours of sitting an...

Physicist Manabu Yukawa returns to Japan from America. Detective Kaoru Utsumi visits him and talks about a case. The case is about a popular girl in a town who disappeared and, several years later, her body was found. A suspect was arrested for her m...

21st Century Girl is an omnibus feature that is of the girls, by the girls and for the girls. The work of 15 women directors under the age of 30, each of whom contributed an 8-minute film, the package highlights a range of genres, visions and themati...

A young bioarchaeologist Yukisuke is attracted to a girl Koyomi, who runs a small stand of taiyaki pastry that he often buys. Koyomi is hospitalized, however, by a car accident on a rainy day after they go out together, and wakes up with short term m...

The first-person protagonist is a 27-year-old freelance writer who returns to her hometown from Tokyo, and she gets together with high school friend Satsuki and cameraman Suga to see Shiina, who they all admired in high school. Along the way, vivid m...

Yasuo (Hiroshi Abe) grew up as an orphan. He married a woman he loved and they had a son Akira (later played by Takumi Kitamura). Yasuo's life seemed great at the time, but his life totally changed after his wife died in accident. Since that time, Ya...

Filmed somewhat in documentary style, it follows three girls over the span of one day and night in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Jonko runs a group of high school girls involved in paid dating, Raku is a street dancer, and Togo was brought up in the...

An introverted schoolgirl falls in love and starts a relationship with one of her classmates. Set in a small seaside town in Japan....

Kurosaki is an erotic novelist who uses his editor and a hired model to act out scenarios in his living room to use for inspiration in his writing. His wife Shizuko calls him a pervert but on the inside, she feels physically neglected. She tries to m...

Five different directors adapt the works of Japanese author Otsuichi in this collection of unconventional live-action and animated shorts. A woman is murdered under odd circumstances in the title film, "Zoo"; twin sisters are treated differently in "...

Set during the Edo Period, a young man from a noble family meets a young woman under a special tree called "Raiou" (the tree was struck by lightning at one time with the broken part eventually sprouting out cherry blossoms). The young woman lived fre...