
When his father flees from debt, carefree college student Osamu sees his life turn upside-down. Expelled from school and evicted from his apartment, he becomes one of Japan’s many ‘net cafe refugees’, barely scraping by each day with temporary and part-time work. Even though he’s still in Tokyo, his circumstances drive him to see and experience his home city in new ways. Trying to survive, Osamu gradually acquaints himself with the ‘invisible’ spaces occupied by the wanderers and homeless of Tokyo… people just like himself.


Serizawa

When his father flees from debt, carefree college student Osamu sees his life turn upside-down. Expelled from school and evicted from his apartment, he becomes one of Japan’s many ‘net cafe refugees’, barely scraping by each day with temporary and part-time work. Even though he’s still in Tokyo, his circumstances drive him to see and experience his home city in new ways. Trying to survive, Osamu gradually acquaints himself with the ‘invisible’ spaces occupied by the wanderers and homeless of Tokyo… people just like himself.
2014-02-22
5
Scraping by in the Tokyo streets.
6.7In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.
7.2Two broke sweethearts wander war-scarred Tokyo on a single Sunday, stretching 35 yen as they chase housing, small pleasures, and a little hope.
7.1The year is 1987 and Japan is just reaching the peak of its economic success. Eighteen-year old Yonosuke Yokomichi arrives in Tokyo from Nagasaki. Ordinary in every way possible, he lives in a suburb far from the excitement of the big city and commutes to a university in the center of Tokyo.
6.9Three distinct tales unfold in the bustling city of Tokyo. Merde, a bizarre sewer-dweller, emerges from a manhole and begins terrorizing pedestrians. After his arrest, he stands trial and lashes out at a hostile courtroom. A man who has resigned himself to a life of solitude reconsiders after meeting a charming pizza delivery woman. And finally, a happy young couple find themselves undergoing a series of frightening metamorphoses.
7.8An American actor in Tokyo struggles to find purpose until he lands an unusual gig: working for a Japanese 'rental family' agency, playing stand-in roles for strangers. As he immerses himself in his clients' worlds, he begins to form genuine bonds that blur the lines between performance and reality.
7.4The struggles of a group of outcasts living in "Yentown", in an alternate-future Japan.
7.0Two 14-year-olds from troubled, abusive homes come together sharing misery and pain. In the aftermath of an earthquake, the classmates learn how to survive while relying on one another for emotional and physical support.
6.4This erotically charged drama traces the intersecting stories of a group of employees and visitors at a notorious "love hotel" in Tokyo's red-light district.
6.4Jacques is the curmudgeonly owner of a gritty New York dive bar that serves as home to a motley assortment of professional drinkers. Jacques is determinedly drinking and smoking himself to death when he meets Lucas, a homeless young man who has already given up on life. Determined to keep his legacy alive, Jacques deems Lucas is a fitting heir and takes him under his wing.
7.3An elderly couple journey to Tokyo to visit their grown children, only to find them preoccupied and self-involved.
7.1In the city of Yokosuka, Kinta and his lover Haruko, both involved with yakuza, brave the post-occupation period with a goal to be together.
7.6Michiyo lives in the small place Osaka and is not happy with her marriage; all she does is cook and clean for her husband.
7.4Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
7.7Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.
6.1After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.
7.3Based on a true story. Liz Murray is a young girl who is taken care of by her loving, but drug-addicted parents. Liz becomes homeless at 15 and after a tragedy comes upon her, she begins her work to finish high school.
7.2An errant salaryman's son gets lost until a man from the Tokyo tenements brings him to vendor Tane, who's reluctant to let the kid board.
5.9Hannah and Tahir fall in love while homeless on the streets of New York. Shelter explores how they got there, and as we learn about their pasts we realize they need each other to build a future.
7.5Brash, loudmouthed and opportunistic, Kikujiro is the unlikely companion for Masao who is determined to see the mother he has never met. The two begin a series of adventures which soon turns out to be a whimsical journey of laughter and tears with a wide array of surprises and unique characters along the way.
6.5When it rains it pours. Kenji divorced his wife, lost his job and his old squeeze Naoko is getting married back home in the north of Japan, specifically in Akita. He returns there in order to attend her wedding. Naoko surprises him by proposing that they have sex again. The one night stand is the new beginning.
7.5Joe Buck is a wide-eyed hustler from Texas hoping to score big with wealthy New York City women; he finds a companion in Enrico "Ratso" Rizzo, an ailing swindler with a bum leg and a quixotic fantasy of escaping to Florida.
7.4The Master’s late-night diner welcomes a woman troubled by funeral fans, an elderly scam victim, and a noodle delivery man struggling with love.
6.7A lonely, chain-smoking office lady in Tokyo falls for her teacher when she decides to take English lessons. When her teacher disappears, she sets out on a journey to find him.
6.8Max is a former playboy who has decided to settle down by marrying his current love, Muriel. However, when Max catches a glimpse of the great lost love of his life, he becomes obsessed with rekindling their relationship.
6.1Izo is an assassin in the service of a Tosa lord and Imperial supporter. After killing dozens of the Shogun's men, Izo is captured and crucified. Instead of being extinguished, his rage propels him through the space-time continuum to present-day Tokyo. Here Izo transforms himself into a new, improved killing machine.
5.9A story of three escort girls living in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. They work at the same escort service while feeling lonely in their urban lives.
Miranda and Josef's relationship is shaken when Anastasia enters the couple's life. The chronology of a partnership unfolds: from getting to know each other to the fading of passion.
7.3The stage of this work is Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo in the early Heisei period. Immediately after the bubble burst gangster countermeasures law, there were gangsters who defended the last territory and young people who freely controlled the city. The youth conflict escalated day by day and became a force that surpassed the yakuza, and the runaways were sent to juvenile prisons one after another, where exclusive rules awaited.
7.4Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
0.0OB navigates a laundromat’s nighttime inhabitants while scavenging 50¢ to buy a Hero-themed gumball.
0.0Assaf wasn’t brought up by his father, and when he dies, he meets his family for the first time, and as the only son, he’s revealed as the sole successor. When Assaf falls in love with Miriam, a homeless woman who stays in his backyard, a Pandora’s box is unleashed.
7.0Abandoned by her father, a young woman embarks on a thousand-mile odyssey through the backroads of America where she meets a disenfranchised drifter. But despite their best efforts, all roads lead back to their terrifying pasts and to a final stand that will determine whether their love can survive their otherness.
6.8Mika works as a nurse by day; by night she entertains covetous men at a girls' bar. Shinji is blind in one eye and ekes out a living as a construction worker. Young and grown-up at the same time, they both lead a lonely existence, but somehow their paths keep miraculously crossing under the Tokyo sky.
0.0Chan Sai-wah abides by his late father's word and marries the wealthy Yam Suk-kuen. They have a son, Kwok-leung. Though Wah is manager of the hotel owned by his father-in-law, Kuen is not a good wife. For all the years of their marriage, Wah has never been happy. Attracted to the humble and honest Carrie Mui, Wah decides to leave his domineering wife Kuen, but is stopped by his father-in-law. The lovers set off to Macau for a new start. Their life has become increasingly miserable under the pressure from Yam's family. When Wah leaves to seek help from his son in Hong Kong, Carrie decides she should leave so that Wah can go without feeling any guilt or burden. On the other hand, Wah is too ashamed to face his son, and returns to Macau. He lives his life in misery. Years pass, the lovers meet again. Wah is reduced to begging in the streets while Carrie becomes an opera diva.
0.0After quitting her stable but soul-crushing job, Leigh passes her days in an apathetic fog until she decides to volunteer at a soup kitchen. There she meets Ethan, a homeless man with whom she begins an electric, but turbulent affair.
7.7Teenage Mutsuko comes to Tokyo for work but ends up at a repair shop. She befriends the owner's family. Neighbors Hiromi, writer Chagawa with admirer Junnosuke strive alongside them in postwar Tokyo's evolution.
7.9On Christmas Eve, three homeless people living on the streets of Tokyo discover a newborn baby among the trash and set out to find its parents.
0.0A sweet and melancholy story that depicts, with beautiful sentimentality, the day when a dreamy and lovely young girl first discovers love in the twilight of Tokyo Tower.
6.5In order to avoid a jail sentence, Sean Boswell heads to Tokyo to live with his military father. In a low-rent section of the city, Sean gets caught up in the underground world of drift racing
0.0La Negra and Vicenta are two homeless women. After losing their place and belongings, they meet Pola, a younger woman who is starting out in a previously unknown reality. The three women accompany each other revealing the complexities of being a woman, being older and living on the street.