ENBU Seminar

Real zombies arrive and terrorize the crew of a zombie film being shot in an abandoned warehouse, said to be the site of military experiments on humans.

It’s 1940, and the population of Japan is divided over its entry into World War II. Satoko, the wife of a fabric merchant, is devoted to her husband but is beginning to suspect he’s up to something. Soon she allows herself to be drawn into a game in which she enigmatically conceals her intentions.

Hamaguchi wrote and directed this film as a graduation project for the students at ENBU Seminar (film and theater school in Tokyo) when he taught there. It is a three-part film: The first part is a documentary-style production of a play; Then the actual full stage production of the play; and the epilogue. Poetry and written words play the central role in the movie.

Shigeo Tokioka (Tetsu Watanabe), a lonely man who has lost his wife, sees a three-line ad for a club in the newspaper that reads, "Tea drinking friends wanted". Mana Sasaki (Rei Okamoto) along with a group of youngsters runs the club, which is actually a prostitution business specializing in arranging appointments for call girls who are over sixty-five years old. A socially-conscious ensemble drama inspired by the news of an actual 2013 prostitution club bust involving the elderly. Directed and written by Sotoyama Bunji, who made his feature film debut with Sansan.

A sage-like psycho holds a seminar for young people who want to kill their enemies.

Focusing on the lives (and a few deaths) of three filmmakers, Rikiya Imaizumi (Their Distance, Sad Tea) tackles weighty themes in this new ensemble drama set in Tokyo and Fukushima. Director Kajiwara, struggling to earn a living from film, gets an offer to do a music video. But it doesn’t go well and he finds himself in an unexpected situation. Actress Aoba witnesses her filmmaker boyfriend's suicide and decides to hide his body. Gardener Taro plans to close the family business he inherits from his father, but receives a phone call one night from the self-declared girlfriend of his estranged twin, Jiro.

A person in charge of “Belonging” appears before people whose lives have ended and tells them, “Do you have any regrets in this world? If you have, you can become an object and return there.” A wife decides to become her husband’s favorite mug, a boy becomes his favorite blue jungle gym, a grandmother becomes the camera that she gave to her grandson, and a mother becomes rosin that is used in a baseball game so that she can watch her son pitch in the game. At the very end of their lives, they spend time with their loved ones as objects.

Minori is a pretty server in a ramen shop. She is fed up with people who care only about her appearance and themselves. She is always straight forward and angry at everyone. She is also angry at herself who cannot really change anything.