The Little House

Japan | 2014 | 136 minutes | Yoji YamadaA country girl named Taki comes to Tokyo in the 1930s to find domestic work, observing the bourgeois goings-on and indiscretions of her employers. Adapted from the novel by Kyoko Nakajima.

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Miss Zombie

Japan | 2013 | 85 minutes | SabuCult director Sabu returns with this elegantly framed satire of zombie lore and modern materialism. When a family has a zombie unexpectedly delivered to their house, they decide to keep her as a domestic servant, with unintended and deadly consequences.

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Patema Inverted

Japan | 2013 | 99 minutes | Yasuhiro YoshiuraA dazzling, emotionally complex science fiction romance about Patema and Age, two teens who live in the same world but on opposite gravitational pulls.

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Unforgiven

Japan | 2013 | 135 minutes | Lee Sang-ilKen Watanabe stars as a retired samurai who takes up his sword anew in this gorgeously shot and impressively choreographed Meiji-period remake of Clint Eastwood’s classic western.

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Why Don’t You Play in Hell?

Japan | 2013 | 126 minutes | Sion SonoAn amateur filmmaking crew called the F*ck Bombers use documentary and flash-mob techniques to film whatever mayhem they encounter, stumbling into a gory war between Yakuza factions.

The Airstrip - Decampment of Modernism, Part III

Germany | 2014 | 108 minutes | Heinz EmigholzThe director of Loos Ornamental (SIFF 2008) returns with another look at modernist architecture, this time traveling from Europe through South America to the island where the US launched the atomic attack on Japan.
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Big in Japan

USA | 2014 | 100 minutes | John JeffcoatReal-life Seattle band Tennis Pro play semi-fictionalized characters of themselves as they travel to Japan in a dramatic, final effort to make it big. The lighthearted plot mixed with Jeffcoat’s guerilla filmmaking style breezily guides you through the band’s comic misadventures in Tokyo.

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Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter

USA | 2014 | 104 minutes | David ZellnerWhen a lonely Japanese woman believes she knows the location of a buried treasure after watching and re-watching Fargo on an old VHS tape, she leaves her cluttered and mundane life in Tokyo to travel to Minnesota and find it.