STAR SANDS

Journalist Shiori Ito embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s outdated judicial and societal systems.

Shuhei is leading a tough life. His alcoholic mother Akiko can only hook up with bad guys and order Shuhei to go get money from his disapproving grandparents instead of going to school. Except raising the little half-sister, his rock-bottom life seems to have no end.

A girl vanishes while walking, leaving her family devastated. As months pass without clues, rumors about her mother's actions intensify online, straining her marriage.

In a once-scenic village now dominated by a vast trash disposal site, a young man yearns to break free from a cruel fate tying him to the very grounds.

A teenage girl's accidental death incites a media frenzy and causes her harsh father to turn his rage against those he believes are responsible.

Taken in by the yakuza at a young age, Kenji swears allegiance to his old-school boss, pledging to adhere to the family code amid ever-changing times.

Following the comic series and the subsequent television serial of the same name, and featuring the same cast, a young and relatively inexperienced man comes across a woman during his working day and sparks fly.

From the late 1950s through the '70s, more than 90,000 of the ethnic Koreans in Japan emigrated to North Korea, a country that promised them affluence, justice, and an end to discrimination. KAZOKU NO KUNI tells the story of one of their number, who returns for just a short period. For the first time in 25 years, Sonho is reunited with his family in Tokyo after being allowed to undergo an operation there. Sonho’s younger sister Rie is at the centre of the film, and is not hard to recognise as the director’s alter-ego. In her documentaries DEAR PYONGYANG and SONA, THE OTHER MYSELF, Yang Yonghi told the story of her own life, and how, at age six, she experienced the departure of her three older brothers, who left their family for Pyongyang.