A psychologist is sent to a station orbiting a distant planet in order to discover what has caused the crew to go insane.

The chaotic worlds of the Japanese Mafia (Yakuza) and an alcoholic doctor collide in this film noir classic from Akira Kurosawa. Gangster Toshiro Mifune visits doctor Takashi Shimura, after an unfortunate incident with a bullet. The doctor, who despises the Yakuza, discovers the young man is suffering from tuberculosis, a disease symbolic of what is happening to the doctor and the community he serves. Facing his own anger and fear, the doctor aligns himself with the gangster's world.

A couple take a trip to Argentina but both men find their lives drifting apart in opposite directions.

In Hong Kong of 1962, Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow, a journalist, move into neighbouring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their respective spouses creates an intimate bond between them.

A winner of awards across the world including Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, 5 BAFTA Awards including Best Actor, Original Screenplay and Score, the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival and many more.

Giuseppe Tornatore's loving homage to the cinema tells the story of Salvatore, a successful film director, returning home for the funeral of Alfredo, his old friend who was the projectionist at the local cinema throughout his childhood. Soon memories of his first love affair with the beautiful Elena and all the highs and lows that shaped his life come flooding back, as Salvatore reconnects with the community he left 30 years earlier.

Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku), the highly influential domestic drama and police procedural from director Akira Kurosawa. Adapting Ed McBain's detective novel King's Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.

Hatred breeds hatred...

24 hours in the lives of three young men in the French suburbs the day after a violent riot.

Idealistic police cadet Chan Wing-Yan (Tony Leung) is recruited by Police Superintendant Wong (Anthony Wong) to go deep undercover as a member of the criminal Triad society. Into the same cadet class, crime boss Hon Sam (Eric Tsang) installs new Triad member Lau Kin Ming (Andy Lau) to become a long-term mole for the gang. A decade later, both have risen through the ranks in their respective aliases -- but when both of their covers are in danger of being blown, a game of life and death ensues.

Yuddy, a Hong Kong playboy known for breaking girls' hearts, tries to find solace and the truth after discovering the woman who raised him isn't his mother.

After professional hitman Jef Costello is seen by witnesses his efforts to provide himself an alibi drive him further into a corner.

Emmi Kurowski (Brigitte Mira), a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali (El Hedi ben Salem). Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi's family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future.

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo's sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal's lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami's own dark side. Starring Toshiro Mifune as the rookie cop and Takashi Shimura as the seasoned detective who keeps him on the right side of the law, Stray Dog (Nora inu) goes beyond crime thriller, probing the squalid world of postwar Japan and the nature of the criminal mind.

Satsuki and Mei's mother has taken ill. In order to be closer to her while she recovers in a rural convalescent hospital, their father moves the two sisters from their home in a city to the countryside. The house they move into is a ramshackle old place in the shadow of an ancient camphor tree, and Satsuki and Mei embark on adventures with the wondrous forest spirits who live nearby.

Presented in Both Subtitled and Dubbed Performances; see SUB or DUB tags next to film time for performance info.

English Dub Voice Cast: Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Tim Daley, Pat Caroll, Lea Salonga, Frank Welker and Paul Butcher

Japanese Language Voice Cast: Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, Shigesato Itoi, Sumi Shimamoto, Tanie Kitabayashi, Hitoshi Takagi

The film chronicles Perceval's knighthood, maturation and eventual peerage amongst the Knights of the Round Table, and also contains brief episodes from the story of Gawain and the crucifixion of Christ.

The legendary midnight movie sensation that firmly embedded samurai mythology within American pop culture consciousness, this English-dubbed reedit of the first two films in the classic Japanese chanbaraseries Lone Wolf and Cub is a giddily entertaining, mesmerizingly gory classic of East-meets-West grindhouse mayhem. Following the murder of his wife at the hands of an evil shogun, an avenging ronin (Tomisaburo Wakayama) roams the countryside with his young son—and the boy's sword-shooting baby carriage—in tow, dispatching ninja assassins with steely resolve in operatically stylized flurries of hallucinatory violence. With its pulsing synth soundtrack (cowritten by Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere & the Raiders) and delirious action set pieces—kinetically edited whirlwinds of flashing blades, spurting blood, and severed limbs—Shogun Assassin proved an instant cult favorite that has bubbled its way up from the underground to the mainstream thanks to its influence on artists ranging from the Wu-Tang Clan to Quentin Tarantino.

Farmers from a village exploited by bandits hire a veteran samurai for protection, who gathers six other samurai to join him.

When they are fed rancid meat, the sailors on the Potemkin revolt against their harsh conditions. Led by Vakulinchuk (Aleksandr Antonov), the sailors kill the officers of the ship to gain their freedom. Vakulinchuk is also killed, and the people of Odessa honor him as a symbol of revolution. Tsarist soldiers arrive and massacre the civilians to quell the uprising. A squadron of ships is sent to overthrow the Potemkin, but the ships side with the revolt and refuse to attack.

Wong Kar Wai’s loose sequel to In the Mood for Love combines that film’s languorous air of romantic longing with a dizzying time-hopping structure and avant-sci-fi twist. Tony Leung Chiu Wai reprises his role as writer Chow Mo-Wan, whose numerous failed relationships with women who drift in and out of his life (and the one who goes in and out of room 2046, down the hall from his apartment) inspire the delirious futuristic love story he pens. 2046’s dazzling fantasy sequences give Wong and two of his key collaborators—cinematographer Christopher Doyle and editor/costume designer/production designer William Chang Suk Ping—license to let their imaginations run wild, propelling the sumptuous visuals and operatic emotions skyward toward the sublime.

In this animated feature by noted Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, 10-year-old Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi) and her parents (Takashi Naitô, Yasuko Sawaguchi) stumble upon a seemingly abandoned amusement park. After her mother and father are turned into giant pigs, Chihiro meets the mysterious Haku (Miyu Irino), who explains that the park is a resort for supernatural beings who need a break from their time spent in the earthly realm, and that she must work there to free herself and her parents.

Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual. The senior counselor for the Iyi clan questions the ronin's resolve and integrity, suspecting Hanshirō of seeking charity rather than an honorable end. What follows is a pair of interlocking stories which lay bare the difference between honor and respect, and promises to examine the legendary foundations of the Samurai code.

Every day, Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) buys a can of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1, symbolizing the day he'll get over his lost love. He's also got his eye on a mysterious woman in a blond wig (Brigitte Lin), oblivious of the fact she's a drug dealer. Cop 663 (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) is distraught with heartbreak over a breakup. But when his ex drops a spare set of his keys at a local cafe, a waitress (Faye Wong) lets herself into his apartment and spruces up his life.

Three back-to-back anime films by three different directors make up this sci-fi trilogy three years in the making. In the chilling "Magnetic Rose," engineers on a spacecraft board an abandoned space station and encounter disturbing paranormal forces. A young lab worker accidentally swallows a chemical weapon and becomes a walking killing machine in "Stink Bomb." In "Cannon Fodder," a young boy and his father fight for survival in a city functioning on paranoia.

An assassin goes through obstacles as he attempts to escape his violent lifestyle despite the opposition of his partner, who is secretly attracted to him.

A student is devastated when he finds that his girlfriend is cheating on him. In order to find out why she did it, he decides to spy on her and her airline pilot lover. Then he sees the pilot with a blonde woman and he begins to follow them…

Dae-Su is an obnoxious drunk bailed from the police station yet again by a friend. However, he's abducted from the street and wakes up in a cell, where he remains for the next 15 years, drugged unconscious when human contact is unavoidable, otherwise with only the television as company. And then, suddenly released, he is invited to track down his jailor with a denouement that is simply stunning.

Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) and Solange (Françoise Dorléac) are twin sisters who each want to find romance and leave their small seaside town of Rochefort, France. Soon they befriend a couple of visiting carnival workers who frequent their lonely mother's (George Chakiris) café and hire the girls to sing in the carnival. Wanting a career as a songwriter, Solange falls for an American musician, Andy (Jacques Perrin), while Delphine dumps her beau and searches Rochefort for her ideal man.

A model discovers a retired judge is keen on invading people's privacy.

In an unnamed country at an unspecified time, there is a fiercely protected post-apocalyptic wasteland known as The Zone. An illegal guide (Aleksandr Kajdanovsky), whose mutant child suggests unspeakable horrors within The Zone, leads a writer (Anatoliy Solonitsyn) and a scientist (Nikolay Grinko) into the heart of the devastation in search of a mythical place known only as The Room. Anyone who enters The Room will supposedly have any of his earthly desires immediately fulfilled.

In a corrupt, greed-fueled world, a powerful alchemist leads a messianic character and seven materialistic figures to the Holy Mountain, where they hope to achieve enlightenment.

A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.

A detective starts spiraling out of control when a wave of gruesome murders with seemingly similar bizarre circumstances are sweeping Tokyo.

Impetuous and restless art student Sabine (Béatrice Romand) is tired of her dead-end job and her married boyfriend, Simon (Féodor Atkine), so she drops both of them. Then, through her pal Clarisse (Arielle Dombasle), she meets Edmond (André Dussollier), an attorney 10 years her senior. Immediately, she decides marriage is just the change she needs, and that Edmond is the perfect candidate for a husband. And so begins her relentless pursuit of matrimony, much to Edmond's chagrin.

A lottery win leads not to financial and emotional freedom but to social captivity, in this wildly cynical classic about love and exploitation by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Casting himself against type, the director plays a suggestible working-class innocent who lets himself be taken advantage of by his bourgeois new boyfriend and his circle of materialistic friends, leading to the kind of resonant misery that only Fassbinder could create. Fox and His Friends is unsparing social commentary, an amusingly pitiless and groundbreaking if controversial depiction of a gay community in 1970s West Germany.

Sergei Parajanov's celebrated masterpiece paints an astonishing portrait of the 18th century Armenian poet Sayat Nova, the 'King of Song'. Parajanov's aim was not a conventional biography but a cinematic expression of his work, resulting in an extraordinary visual poem. Key moments in his subject's life are illustrated through a series of exquisitely orchestrated tableaux filled with rich colour and stunning iconography, each scene a celluloid painting alive with stylised movement.

A S.W.A.T. team becomes trapped in a tenement run by a ruthless mobster and his army of killers and thugs.

The crowning achievement of Orson Welles's extraordinary cinematic career, Chimes at Midnight was the culmination of the filmmaker's lifelong obsession with Shakespeare's ultimate rapscallion, Sir John Falstaff. Usually a comic supporting figure, Falstaff—the loyal, often soused friend of King Henry IV's wayward son Prince Hal—here becomes the focus: a robustly funny and ultimately tragic screen antihero played by Welles with looming, lumbering grace. Integrating elements from both Henry IV plays as well as Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, Welles created a gritty and unorthodox Shakespeare film as a lament, he said, “for the death of Merrie England.” Poetic, philosophical, and visceral—with a kinetic centerpiece battle sequence that rivals anything in the director's body of work—Chimes at Midnight is as monumental as the figure at its heart.

Winner of the 2023 Palme d'Or, a gripping courtroom thriller, mystery and family drama all in one. The first film in Cannes history to win both the Palme d'Or and the equally prestigious Palm Dog!

When her husband Samuel is mysteriously found dead in the snow below their secluded chalet, Sandra (Sandra Hüller) becomes the main suspect when the police begin to question whether he fell or was pushed. The trial soon becomes not just an investigation, but a gripping psychological journey into the depths of Sandra and Samuel's complicated marriage. With conflicting evidence and inconsistent testimony, words are wielded like weapons and shocking truths come to light in this acclaimed drama.

A low-level triad "big brother" has a hot-tempered "little brother" who can't keep out of trouble, and consequently is in constant need of being bailed out by his protector. The "big brother" is super cool, but lacks the ambition to rise in the ranks of the triad societies - and once he meets his cousin from Kowloon and falls in love with her, he even thinks about leaving "the life"

This performance will feature a live score performed by Hugo Max.

"I first saw Murnau’s Symphony of Horror when I was nine years old. The film’s expressionistic images continue to haunt me, the chiaroscuro compositions tapping vividly into timeless subconscious fears.

My improvisations on viola and piano draw inspiration from the leitmotifs and sound effects of 70s horror soundtracks and the languages of Second Viennese School composers contemporary to Murnau, also Jewish Traditional Music that informs my personal approach to creating a score for the film." - Hugo Max

Please view this YouTube video for a sample of Hugo's work.


Photo Credit - Richard Ecclestone

An iconic film of the German expressionist cinema, and one of the most famous of all silent movies, F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror continues to haunt — and, indeed, terrify — modern audiences with the unshakable power of its images. By teasing a host of occult atmospherics out of dilapidated set-pieces and innocuous real-world locations alike, Murnau captured on celluloid the deeply-rooted elements of a waking nightmare, and launched the signature "Murnau-style" that would change cinema history forever.

In this first-ever screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, a simple real-estate transaction leads an intrepid businessman deep into the superstitious heart of Transylvania. There he encounters the otherworldly Count Orlok — portrayed by the legendary Max Schreck, in a performance the very backstory of which has spawned its own mythology — who soon after embarks upon a cross-continental voyage to take up residence in a distant new land... and establish his ambiguous dominion. As to whether the count's campaign against the plague-wracked populace erupts from satanic decree, erotic compulsion, or the simple impulse of survival — that remains, perhaps, the greatest mystery of all in this film that's like a blackout...

Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig), the widowed mother of a teenage son, Sylvain (Jan Decorte), ekes out a drab, repetitive existence in her tiny Brussels apartment. Jeanne's days are divided between humdrum domestic chores -- shopping, cooking, housework -- and her job as an occasional prostitute, which keeps her financially afloat. She seems perfectly resigned to her situation until a series of slight interruptions in her routine leads to unexpected and dramatic changes.

A husband and wife lie to each other about their weekend travel plans, only to both show up at the family's country house with their lovers.

Fifteen-year-old Pauline (Amanda Langlet) journeys to the Normandy coast for a summer vacation with her adult cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasle). Marion is waiting out her divorce and, along the shore, runs into her old flame Pierre (Pascal Greggory). Although he's anxious to rekindle their former romance, Marion wants nothing to do with him, and she sets him up with Pauline. The romantic web gets more tangled yet when Marion starts a liaison with Henri (Féodor Atkine), a middle-aged playboy.

When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patients' dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose. Only a young female therapist, Paprika, can stop it.

In 1930s Korea, a swindler and a young woman pose as a Japanese count and a handmaiden to seduce a Japanese heiress and steal her fortune.

Clumsy Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati) finds himself perplexed by the intimidating complexity of a gadget-filled Paris. He attempts to meet with a business contact but soon becomes lost. His roundabout journey parallels that of an American tourist (Barbara Dennek), and as they weave through the inventive urban environment, they intermittently meet, developing an interest in one another. They eventually get together at a chaotic restaurant, along with several other quirky characters.

Foreign Legion officer Galoup recalls his once glorious life, training troops in the Gulf of Djibouti. His existence there was happy, strict and regimented, until the arrival of a promising young recruit, Sentain, plants the seeds of jealousy in Galoup's mind.

Maria (Hanna Schygulla) marries Hermann Braun in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. Alone, Maria puts to use her beauty and ambition in order to find prosperity during Germany’s “economic miracle” of the 1950s. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s biggest international box-office success, The Marriage of Maria Braun is a heartbreaking study of a woman picking herself up from the ruins of her own life, as well as a pointed metaphorical attack on a society determined to forget its past.

"THE COLOUR OF ILLUSION IS PERFECT BLUE"

A young Japanese singer is encouraged by her agent to quit singing and pursue an acting career, beginning with a role in a murder mystery TV show.

In 1986, Park (Song Kang-ho) and Cho (Kim Roi-ha) are two simple-minded detectives assigned to a double murder investigation in a South Korean province. But when the murderer strikes several more times with the same pattern, the detectives realize that they are chasing the country's first documented serial killer. Relying on only their basic skills and tools, Park and Jo attempt to piece together the clues and solve the case in this thriller based on true events.

This widely acclaimed film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a stunning, senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in present-day Belarus, teenage Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko, in one of the screen’s most searing depictions of anguish since Renée Falconetti’s Joan of Arc) eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camerawork and expressionistic sound design. Nearly suppressed by Soviet censors who took eight years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made.

BLEAK WEEK : CINEMA OF DESPAIR is co-presented by the American Cinematheque.

When a woman, able to read the thoughts of others, comes to help survivors of the 1995 Kobe earthquake, she encounters a girl with Multiple Personality Disorder whose dangerous 13th personality, Isola, must be stopped.

BLEAK WEEK : CINEMA OF DESPAIR is co-presented by the American Cinematheque.

Featuring Intro by Robert Eggers (Director of The Witch, The Lighthouse and Nosferatu)

During the Prussian invasion of Poland in 1793, a Polish nobleman is saved from imprisonment by a stranger who wants a list of conspirators as repayment. He travels across the country with his rescuer and commits a number of gory murders.

BLEAK WEEK : CINEMA OF DESPAIR is co-presented by the American Cinematheque.

While the Civil War rages on between the Union and the Confederacy, three men – a quiet loner, a ruthless hitman, and a Mexican bandit – comb the American Southwest in search of a strongbox containing $200,000 in stolen gold.

A daredevil driver is determined to compete in Redline, the most popular race in the galaxy. The race only occurs every five years, but in order to participate he must overcome the mafia, the government and even love.

Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.

After Louise (Pascale Ogier) completes her art school studies, she begins to work as an interior designer in Paris, but her burgeoning career soon takes a back seat to her personal life. Although Louise lives with her lover Remi (Tcheky Karyo), an architect, his desire to settle down and experience marital bliss conflicts with her late-night lifestyle. Also complicating matters is Octave (Fabrice Luchini), a charming, married writer who is smitten with Louise.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's follow-up to his international breakthrough THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN is a wildly anarchic satire of guerrilla terrorism in which a band of leftist radicals inadvertently become puppets of the West German government, which uses them to justify its authoritarian policies. Taking aim at the entire spectrum of political ideologies, THE THIRD GENERATION stands as one of Fassbinder's most provocative and explosively controversial explorations of power and control.

At the age of seventy, after years of consolidating his empire, the Great Lord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai) decides to abdicate and divide his domain amongst his three sons. Taro (Akira Terao), the eldest, will rule. Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), his second son, and Saburo (Daisuke Ryu) will take command of the Second and Third Castles but are expected to obey and support their elder brother. Saburo defies the pledge of obedience and is banished.

Things go badly for a hack director and film crew shooting a low budget zombie film in an abandoned WWII Japanese facility when they are attacked by real zombies.

Both the final film of this period in which Akira Kurosawa would directly wrestle with the demons of the Second World War and his most literal representation of living in an atomic age, the galvanizing I Live in Fear presents Toshiro Mifune as an elderly, stubborn businessman so fearful of a nuclear attack that he resolves to move his reluctant family to South America. With this mournful film, the director depicts a society emerging from the shadows but still terrorized by memories of the past and anxieties for the future.

Delphine (Marie Rivière) is a beautiful young Parisian who is still smarting from a recent break-up. When a friend nixes their travel plans shortly before the trip, Delphine is left to decide how to spend her holiday. Soon she is dealing with various uncomfortable situations, including a beach getaway where she is the only single person. After attempting a trip to the overcrowded Alps, Delphine entertains more vacation options, but will the restless soul ever find what she's looking for?

A disheveled man who wanders out of the desert, Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton) seems to have no idea who he is. When a stranger manages to contact his brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell), Travis is awkwardly reunited with his sibling. Travis has been missing for years, and his presence unsettles Walt and his family, which also includes Travis's own son, Hunter (Hunter Carson). Soon Travis must confront his wife, Jane (Nastassja Kinski), and try to put his life back together.

Sent to an exotic island by his government, a spy (Lee) competes in a deadly tournament by day and infiltrates a ruthless crime lord's illegal drug operation by night. With plot twists, exquisite cinematography and bone-crushing fight scenes choreographed by Lee himself, ENTER THE DRAGON remains cinema's most influential martial arts action film.

Veronica and Boris are blissfully in love, until the eruption of World War II tears them apart. Boris is sent to the front lines…and then communication stops. Meanwhile, Veronica tries to ward off spiritual numbness while Boris's draft-dodging cousin makes increasingly forceful overtures. Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1958 Cannes Film Festival, The Cranes Are Flying is a superbly crafted drama, bolstered by stunning cinematography and impassioned performances.

A "metal fetishist" (Shin'ya Tsukamoto), driven mad by the maggots wriggling in the wound he's made to embed metal into his flesh, runs out into the night and is accidentally run down by a Japanese businessman (Tomorowo Taguchi) and his girlfriend (Kei Fujiwara). The pair dispose of the corpse in hopes of quietly moving on with their lives. However, the businessman soon finds that he is now plagued by a vicious curse that transforms his flesh into iron.

Set in feudal Japan, this film presents an intriguing tale of violent crime in the woods, told from the perspective of four different characters -- a bandit, a woman, her husband and a woodcutter. Only two things about the incident seem to be clear -- the woman was raped and her husband is now dead. However, the other elements radically differ as the four participants and/or witnesses relate their own stories (with the dead man, eerily enough, speaking through a medium). As each account is revealed, what seemed black-and-white turns to various hues of gray, leading to surprising -- and confounding -- revelations.

The lives of various young French people intersect in a recently constructed suburb near Paris. Blanche (Emmanuelle Chaulet), an uptight office worker, falls for the handsome Alexandre (Francois-Eric Gendron), whom she meets through her vibrant new friend, Lea (Sophie Renoir). Unfortunately for Blanche, Alexandre is dating the artistic Adrienne (Anne-Laure Meury), while Lea is seeing Fabien (Eric Viellard). Before long, though, these relationships shift, leading to new romantic pairings.

A young executive hunts down his father's killer in director Akira Kurosawa's scathing The Bad Sleep Well. Continuing his legendary collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa combines elements of Hamlet and American film noir to chilling effect in exposing the corrupt boardrooms of postwar corporate Japan.

Two young girls meet, Reinette from the countryside and Mirabelle from Paris, and decide to take a flat together in Paris where they attend University. Four successive stories about their daily lives illustrate the very different views, characters and relation to the world of these two friends.

The socialist mayor of a small village in France dreams of building an arts center but he runs up against some opposition.

This imaginative Japanese production presents a series of short films by lauded director Akira Kurosawa. In one chapter, a young boy spies on foxes that are holding a wedding ceremony; the following installment features another youth, who witnesses a magical moment in an orchard. In the segment "Crows," an aspiring artist enters the world of a painting and encounters Vincent van Gogh (Martin Scorsese). Many of the films in this inventive movie are tied together by an environmental theme.