Strangers in Kyoto (2025)

Memoirs of a Geisha

In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.

When the Last Sword Is Drawn

Kanichiro Yoshimura is a Samurai and Family man who can no longer support his wife and children on the the low pay he receives from his small town clan, he is forced by the love for his family to leave for the city in search of higher pay to support them.

Chikamatsu Monogatari

When the wife of a 17th century Kyoto scroll-maker is falsely accused of having an affair with his best employee, the pair flee the city and find themselves falling for one another.

Lady Maiko

Country bumpkin Haruko only ever wanted to become a maiko, an apprentice geisha. Initially rebuffed for lack of references, Haruko's strong accent intrigues a linguistics professor, who undertakes to coach her.

I Lived in Kyoto For A While

27-year-old Eto Kana lives in Tokyo and has never been out of the city before. She used to work as a designer and stay in a company dormitory but moved back to her family home after resigning due to the stress from interpersonal relationships. Meanwhile, Kana’s family gets a call about an elderly granduncle who got injured. She goes to Kyoto where he lives at the request of her worried mother and stays there for several days to take care of him.

The End of Summer

The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.

No Regrets for Our Youth

After her anti-fascist professor father is dismissed, Yukie navigates love, political repression, and wartime upheaval—ultimately forging her own path in pre- and post-WWII Japan.

The 47 Ronin

In 1701, Lord Takuminokami Asano has a feud with Lord Kira and he tries to kill Kira in the corridors of the Shogun's palace. The Shogun sentences Lord Asano to commit suppuku and deprives the palace and lands from his clan, but does not punish Lord Kira. Lord Asano's vassals leave the land and his samurais become ronin and want to seek revenge against the dishonor of their Lord. But their leader Kuranosuke Oishi asks the Shogun to restore the Asano clan with his brother Daigaku Asano. One year later, the Shogun refuses his request and Oishi and forty-six ronin revenge their Lord.

Taira Clan Saga

Japan, 1137. The Taira family, a samurai clan, becomes involved in the disputes between Emperor Toba and the monks of Mount Hiei.

A Geisha

Fleeing a distressing family situation, Eiko, a very young girl, becomes an apprentice to Miyoharu, a veteran geisha. Both, determined to preserve their professional integrity, must face the selfishness and ambition of several petty people.

The Woman in the Rumor

After living a traumatic experience in Tokyo, Yukiko returns to Kyoto, where Hatsuko, her mother, runs a brothel, which upsets Yukiko very much.

Norwegian Wood

Toru recalls his life in the 1960s, when his friend Kizuki killed himself and he grew close to Naoko, Kizuki's girlfriend, and another woman, the outgoing, lively Midori.

Mother Water

Set with three central figures, "Mother Water" describes the daily lives of people near the Kamo River in Kyoto, Japan.

Sisters of the Gion

Umekichi, a geisha in the Gion district of Kyoto, feels obliged to help her lover Furusawa when he asks to stay with her after becoming bankrupt and leaving his wife. However her younger sister Omocha tells her she is wasting her time and money on a loser. She thinks that they should both find wealthy patrons to support them. Omocha therefore tries various schemes to get rid of Furusawa, and set themselves up with better patrons.

Strong Women, Weak Men

After the closure of a coal mine leaves her husband unemployed, Fumiko travels from Kyushu to Kyoto with her daughter Kimiko, and they become hostesses at a cabaret.

Yasuko, Songs of Days Past

In the early 1920s, Yasuko, a budding actress, crosses paths with Chūya Nakahara, a young poet destined to be revered as a genius. Drawn to each other by their shared pretentiousness, they begin living together and quickly fall into a complex relationship. Their lives take a dramatic turn when they move to Tokyo and are visited by Hideo Kobayashi, a friend of Chūya’s who would later emerge as one of Japan's foremost literary critics. This seemingly chance encounter not only alters Yasuko's fate but also entwines the three of them in an intense and inescapable destiny.

Wonderwall: The Movie

A university orders that old, decrepit Konoe Dormitory be rebuilt, to the opposition of the students who still occupy and maintain it. Movie version with additional scenes of the 2018 NHK's drama show.

Lights of Kyoto

Born and raised in Kyoto, 17 years old Takatoyo spends all his summer holidays in his hometown. However, this time will be different. Takatoyo will experience his first love and first challenges, creating memories that will take him out of his ordinary life.

Laidbackers

In order to take over her grandmother's Dagashi store, art student Kumi Honamanuma moved to Kyoto. She met Harami Mino, K Kusanagi, Mai Haisaka, and a dog who lives in the store, which supposed to be empty. Kumi ended up living with these girls, who claim that they are heroes reincarnated to contemporary period to chase after the demon king. Harami and others seem to live in a peaceful life with no missions to to do anymore, Ran, who was demon king in the past and appears to be an elementary school girl from failing to reincarnate, one day. The story begins with Ran requesting to collect demon king's fragments.

Rurouni Kenshin Part II: Kyoto Inferno

Kenshin has settled into his new life with Kaoru and his other friends when he is approached with a request from the Meiji government. Makoto Shishio, a former assassin like Kenshin, was betrayed, set on fire and left for dead. He survived, and is now in Kyoto, plotting with his gathered warriors to overthrow the new government. Against Kaoru's wishes, Kenshin reluctantly agrees to go to Kyoto and help keep his country from falling back into civil war.

Night Is Short, Walk On Girl

As a group of university students go out for a night on the town, a sophomore known only as "The Girl with Black Hair" experiences a series of surreal encounters with the local nightlife – all the while unaware of the romantic longings of "Senpai", a senior student who has been creating increasingly fantastic and contrived reasons to run into her in an effort to win her heart.

The Old Capital

Chieko Sanda has operated a dry goods store in Kyoto for the past 20 years. Her family has owned the store for generations. Chieko is conflicted on whether her daughter Mai will take over her position with the changing of times. Mai is a college student and has not decided whether to take another job or take over the dry goods store. Meanwhile, Mitsuko Nakata runs a forestry in the outskirts of Kyoto. Mitsuko is Chieko Sanda’s twin sister, but they were separated at an early age. Mitsuko is in serious financial difficulties. Mituko's daughter, Yui, has talent in art and she goes to France. There, Yui feels a sense of powerlessness. Mitsuko notices and goes to Paris to see her daughter. Mai travels to Paris to take part in an event to show Japanese culture.

Flower and Sword

In the late 16th century, after the death of Nobunaga Oda, Hideyoshi Toyotomi takes power. The age of war is about to end, but Hideyoshi Toyotomi's rule makes life difficult for the people. Monk Senko Ikenobo is a master of flower arrangement. He prays for peace in the world and tries to give hope to the people with flower arrangement. He becomes good friends with Rikyu. Rikyu is a monk and a politician. He has the most profound influence on chanoyu. Rikyu is forced to commit hara-kiri by Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s order. Monk Senko Ikenobo challenges Hideyoshi Toyotomi.

Girl Boss Guerilla

Sachiko is the leader of a girl gang from Shinjuku who wind up in Kyoto and make a bid to take over the local girl gangs there.

Uji Has Many Stories

The protagonist visits Uji and tours the town, which has been shaped by the accumulation of history and culture from various eras, including the Heian period.

Impossible to Imagine

The story of a traditional Kyoto woman who runs a failing kimono business and the entrepreneurial, biracial, business consultant who comes to help keep it solvent. Along the way they fall in love, but his need for change clashes with her desire for the world to stay the same. In the end, can they change enough for each other?

GREAT PRETENDER razbliuto

Presumed dead, master con artist and recovering amnesiac Dorothy is discovered by Shanghai Longu-bang, a mob who wants payback for her conning them. With no memories and nowhere to go, she must rely on a local crime underboss to elude Taipei's criminal underworld all while tracking down leads to her mysterious past.

Waking Up

Waking Up is a quietly introspective short film shot entirely on location in Japan during Devereaux's first tour in the country in September and October of 2024. Filmed across Tokyo (Nakano, Ekoda, Shinjuku, Chiyoda, and along the Chuo Line), Matsumoto in Nagano, and Ukyo in Kyoto, the film captures fleeting, seemingly mundane moments that held deep personal significance for the filmmaker. Each shot captures a distinct moment when Devereaux felt his nervous system decompress just enough to be inclined to film — moments of stillness and clarity amid the motion of travel and creative exploration. Waking Up is both a poetic travelogue and a personal awakening. Echoing his own words — "When I arrived in Japan, it felt like I had finally woken up from a bad dream" — the film offers a meditative window into moments of quiet revelation, captured not for spectacle but for memory.

The Early Years

Based on a true story, set during the drainage of the Maliq swamp.

Unbreakable

Mariel and Deena were strangers until they became the best of friends because of the similarities in the pain that they had experienced. Their friendship is put to the test when one of them decides to get married.

Prison Break

One late night in June 1942, Sakuma Seitaro dangles from the frame of a skylight in an isolation cell in Akita Prison. He forces open the glass window and breaks out of jail. This crime even reaches the ears of Urata Susumu, the chief warden of Kosuge Prison in Tokyo. Urata had been in charge of those sentenced to life in the prison until last year. Although Sakuma is a dangerous person who had also broken out of jail in Aomori, he submits to Urata who is the only person who had treated him kindly in the past. However, three months after escaping from jail, Sakuma shows up at Urata’s house. He has come to complain about the inhumane Akita prison officers. But he is locked up again after Urata notifies the police during an unguarded moment. A year later, Sakuma is sent to Abashiri Prison and Urata is also ordered to transfer as the prison’s chief warden.

I'm Your Woman

A woman is forced to go on the run after her husband betrays his partners, sending her and her baby on a dangerous journey.

Vicious

Sid and Nancy: impossible love between unviable beings. Anguish explodes into blood delusions. Torn by contradictions, the desperate search is the only way. But every crime brings its punishment. The synthesis between agony and ecstasy is often fatal.

Bad Grandmas

Four grandmothers accidentally kill a conman and, to cover it up, they get rid of the body. When the conman's partner shows up, things go south.

Der Lindenbaum

A young woman, Asami, searches for the man who helps her quest to enter medical school.

How Bugs Bunny Won the West

How Bugs Bunny Won the West is a Looney Tunes special that was released in 1978. This special was narrated by Denver Pyle. The special is available as a bonus feature on The Essential Bugs Bunny DVD set. It had a running time of 30 min.

Flowers

A snapshot into the last moments of a relationship gone well past its expiry date in the lead up to a tragic event. Very loosely inspired by Stephen King's "The Man Who Loved Flowers"

With Prisoners

After a bar brawl with an off-duty cop, aspiring thug Fan (Neo Yau, Fire Lee’s gonzo Robbery) is sentenced to three months in juvenile detention like Hong Kong’s Sha Tsui Detention Center, which practices military-style rehabilitation. Insults and abuse are core tenets of the treatment, carried out by the bored, jaded staff, where an occasional true believer lingers among the guards...

When Women Lost Their Tails

Filli and the cavemen from "When Women Had Tails" are living a carefree life inside a dinosaur skeleton. But when conman Ham introduces them to the concept of currency and economics, their lives fall apart. On top of that, Filli starts to fall in love with Ham.

The Grocer's Son

Antoine Sforza, a thirty-year-old young man, left his village ten years before in order to start a new life in the big city, but now that his father, a traveling grocer, is in hospital after a stroke, he more or less reluctantly accepts to come back to replace him in his daily rounds.

Punch-Drunk Love

A socially awkward and volatile small business owner meets the love of his life after being threatened by a gang of scammers.

Hard Eight

A stranger mentors a young Reno gambler who weds a hooker and befriends a vulgar casino regular.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada

When brash Texas border officer Mike Norton wrongfully kills and buries the friend and ranch hand of Pete Perkins, the latter is reminded of a promise he made to bury his friend, Melquiades Estrada, in his Mexican home town. He kidnaps Norton and exhumes Estrada's corpse, and the odd caravan sets out on horseback for Mexico.

The Reader

The story of Michael Berg, a German lawyer who, as a teenager in the late 1950s, had an affair with an older woman, Hanna, who then disappeared only to resurface years later as one of the defendants in a war crimes trial stemming from her actions as a concentration camp guard late in the war. He alone realizes that Hanna is illiterate and may be concealing that fact at the expense of her freedom.

Train of Life

In 1941, the inhabitants of a small Jewish village in Central Europe organize a fake deportation train so that they can escape the Nazis and flee to Palestine.

Married Life

A very gentle middle-aged man is married, but when he falls in love with another woman, he decides that to divorce his wife would humiliate her too much – so instead he decides to kill her.

The Red Tent

Torn by personal guilt, Italian General Umberto Nobile reminisces about his 1928 failed Arctic expedition aboard the airship Italia.

Chiko

This is the story of Isa, who grows up in a Hamburg suburb. It might be one of the world's richest cities but every beast has its belly and here, in the very underbelly, Chiko lives in a world where violence, staking and keeping a claim, and drug taking are the norm. Where down is not an option, Chiko is determined to rise to the top, whatever and whomever it costs.

21

Ben Campbell is a young, highly intelligent student at M.I.T. who strives to succeed. Wanting a scholarship to transfer to Harvard School of Medicine to become a doctor, Ben learns that he cannot afford the $300,000 tuition as he comes from a poor, working-class background. But one evening, Ben is introduced by his unorthodox math professor to a small but secretive club of five students, Jill, Choi, Kianna, and Fisher, who are being trained by Professor Rosa to count cards at blackjack.

Stay

Psychiatrist Sam Foster has a new patient, Henry Letham, who claims to be suicidal. In trying to diagnose him, Sam visits Henry's prior therapist and also finds Henry's mother -- even though Henry has said that he murdered both of his parents. As reality starts to contradict fact, Sam spirals into an unstable mental state. Then he finds a clue as to how and when Henry may try to kill himself, and races to try to stop him.

A Life Less Ordinary

A couple of angels, O'Reilly and Jackson, are sent to Earth to make sure that their next supervised love-connection succeeds. They follow Celine, a spoiled rich girl who has just accidentally shot a suitor and, due to a misunderstanding, is kidnapped by janitor Robert. Although Celine quickly frees herself, she stays with Robert for thrills. O'Reilly and Jackson pursue, hoping to unite the prospective lovers.

Barbarella

In the far future, a highly sexual woman is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Durand-Durand. Along the way she encounters various unusual people.

The Green Room

A widower maintains a memorial room filled with his late wife's belongings. When fire destroys it, he transforms a chapel into a new shrine to preserve her memory.

Tout Va Bien

A strike at a French sausage factory contributes to the estrangement of a married filmmaker and his reporter wife.

Alphaville

Lemmy Caution is on a mission to eliminate Professor Von Braun, the creator of a malevolent computer that rules the city of Alphaville. Befriended by the scientist’s daughter Natasha, Lemmy must unravel the mysteries of the strictly logical Alpha 60 and teach Natasha the meaning of the word “love.”

Band of Outsiders

Cinephile slackers Franz and Arthur spend their days mimicking the antiheroes of Hollywood noirs and Westerns while pursuing the lovely Odile. The misfit trio upends convention at every turn, be it through choreographed dances in cafés or frolicsome romps through the Louvre. Eventually, their romantic view of outlaws pushes them to plan their own heist, but their inexperience may send them out in a blaze of glory -- which could be just what they want.