Ikaino (2025)

Soup and Ideology

Confronting half of her mother’s life—her mother who had survived the Jeju April 3 Incident—the director tries to scoop out disappearing memories. A tale of family, which carries on from Dear Pyongyang, carving out the cruelty of history, and questioning the precarious existence of the nation-state.

Arirang Rhapsody

The protagonists of the film are the Zainichi Korean women living in Kawasaki. They were tossed about by the war, and after many trips to and fro across the sea in search of a place to live, they finally arrived in Kawasaki, where they have lived modestly and vigorously.

Memories Showers Seas

The late Kim Dong-il, a Jeju April 3 refugee in Japan, left behind over 2,000 crocheted items and pieces of clothing that preserved her memories, identity, and history. As the film traces the redistribution of her belongings, it illuminates the still-unhealed lives of various Zainichi Koreans who lived through the same era, sharing and connecting their intertwined memories.

Dear Pyongyang

Dear Pyongyang is a documentary film by Zainichi Korean director Yang Yong-hi (Korean: 양영희, Hanja: 梁英姬) about her own family. It was shot in Osaka Japan (Yang's hometown) and Pyongyang, North Korea, In the 1970s, Yang's father, an ardent communist and leader of the pro-North movement in Japan, sent his three sons from Japan to North Korea under a repatriation campaign sponsored by ethnic activist organisation and de facto North Korean embassy Chongryon; as the only daughter, Yang herself remained in Japan. However, as the economic situation in the North deteriorated, the brothers became increasingly dependent for survival on the care packages sent by their parents. The film shows Yang's visits to her brothers in Pyongyang, as well as conversations with her father about his ideological faith and his regrets over breaking up his family.

The Voices of the Silenced

Director Park Soo-nam, a second-generation Korean resident in Japan who is losing his eyesight, decides to digitally restore 16mm film she shot a long time ago, relying on her daughter Park Ma-eui's eyesight. The blood, tears, and numerous corpses of Koreans living in Japan are clearly engraved in the film filmed over 50 years.

Strangers on the Field

In April 2013, unfamiliar faces appear at the Jamsil Baseball Stadium during the opening matches between Doosan and SK. The nervous middle-aged men throwing and batting the first ball are, in fact, Korean-Japanese former team members that played on that same spot in the 1982 finals of the Bong-hwang-dae-ki games.

Horoomon

One woman. One racist lie. One lawsuit that shook Japan. Korean Japanese entrepreneur Shin Sugok takes on major media in this electro-shock legal thriller about refusing to be silenced.

Our School

This documentary is about the 3rd and 4th generation Korean residents of Japan who are students of Chosen elementary, middle, and high school in Hokkaido. It follows the students through one year of the eventual 11 years` national education. Rather than focusing on special occasions or issues, it reveals what it is like to live in Japan as Korean-Japanese by describing their everyday lives.

I Am From Chosun

After 15 years of knowing Chosun people in Japan I met on Mt. Geumgang in 2002, I face the history of colonization and division that I had not known before. They’ve been to North Korea many times, but never to South Korea. They tell us why they want to live as Chosun people despite the discrimination in Japanese society. 

The Hanbok on the Court

Plot unavailable

Shiso

A Japanese herb called 'shiso' looks like a perilla leaf but has a unique fragrance. It's like how I have a Korean name and nationality but still feel a sense of alienation in Korean society. The death of my grandmother, a first-generation Zainichi, raises a question for me: Does death also mark the end of the life of an outsider? In the end, where do we return to?

Fighter in the Wind

An account of karate competitor Choi Yeung-Eui who went to Japan after World War II to become a fighter pilot but found a very different path instead. He changed his name to Masutatsu Oyama and went across the country, defeating martial artists one after another. This film concentrates on the period when he is still young, and developing his famous karate style, Kyokushin.

Blood and Bones

In 1923, teenager Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island, in South Korea, to Osaka, in Japan. Along the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of kamaboko, processed seafood products, in his poor Korean-Japanese community exploiting his employees.

Yakiniku Dragon

Set in the 1970's in the Kansai region of Japan.. Yong-Gil is Korean, but he moved to Japan and settled down. He runs a small restaurant named Yakiniku Dragon. He is married and has three daughters: oldest daughter Jung-Hwa, middle daughter Yi-Hwa and youngest daughter Mi-Hwa. Oldest daughter Jung-Hwa is dating Tetsuo, but they break up. Middle daughter Yi-Hwa loves Tetsuo and marries him, but Tetsuo still loves her older sister and they divorce. Youngest daughter Mi-Hwa wants to become a singer, but she is in love with a married man.

Chong

A spirited and brave fiction debut by Lee Sang-il, a Korean-Japanese filmmaker, that explores the taboo subject of the relations between Korean immigrants and Japanese in Japan.

GO

Sugihara, a Japanese-born, third-generation Korean teenager struggles to find a place in a society that will not accept him.

Worst by Chance

Hidenori is a Japanese-Korean man with no sense of belonging, destination or education. He drifts around and meanders through life until a death reminds him of his heritage and so begins a journey to South Korea.

Death by Hanging

A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but somehow survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.

All Under the Moon

A Korean taxi-driver interacts both humorously and tragically with his customers and employers in '90s Tokyo.

Pacchigi!

Romeo, A.K.A. Kosuke Matsuyama, is a second-year high school student. A nice, normal, nonviolent type, he suddenly finds himself in the middle of a rampaging crowd of Korean boys, outraged by insults perpetrated by several of his idiotic class-mates on two Korean girls. He makes a narrow escape, but soon after, he and his best bud Yoshio are sent by their home-room teacher to invite the Korean students to a friendly soccer game as a way of restoring the peace.

Empire of Kids

Following a stint in reform school, Ryu (Shinsuke Shimada) returns to his home, the Minami area of Osaka, accompanied by his new friend Ko (Takeshi Masu). He's greeted by his friends, Chabo (Ryusuke Matsumoto) and Ken (Bang-ho Cho). They seek to forge their own path through a multitude of rival gangs in Kita and Minami, including the Hokushin Alliance, backed by the yakuza, the Hope Association, and various other minor factions, including Zainichi Korean groups. What follows is a wild, fast-paced story of violence, revenge, betrayal, and discrimination, that never loses its sense of humor.

Rikidozan: A Hero Extraordinaire

Story of Rikidozan, a sumo wrestler who can only achieve limited success in Japan because he's half Korean. But when Rikidozan goes to the United States and discovers professional wrestling, he becomes a hero back home.

Deliver Us from Evil

A retired contract killer goes on a bloody rampage when a young girl finds herself at the mercy of gangland human traffickers and only one man can come to her rescue, with an arsenal of weapons and years of experience in the art of killing.

Pacchigi! Love & Peace

In 1974, during the height of the recession, a Japanese Korean family relocates to Tokyo to raise money and seek better treatment for their ill son.

Beyond Tradition – The Power of Yodelling and Yoiking

What is tradition? This is the question posed by yodeller and food researcher Meinrad Koch from Canton Appenzell. In search of an answer, he embarks on a journey.

Nomad Solitude

In their vehicle, Laurie, Kristy and Linda live alone on the American roads. Like thousands of modern American nomads who can no longer afford to pay for their housing. With no money to spare, these three sixty-year old women are fleeing, in their own way, a part of their history that has left a deep mark on them. Driving away, they try to regain some form of peace. But as the miles and seasons pass, despite their impressive temerity and resilience, their quest for a better future is challenged by unexpected events that hit a country in crisis. Will they nevertheless manage, at the end of the road, to find the serenity they are looking for, in order to become someone again?

Memories of the Future

A story where the Cristero Rebellion creates a story of love, passion, and betrayal. When the Federal Rosas and his lover arrive in a town, a local woman feels strangely attracted to him. The woman will surrender under the pretext that the population is liberated when in reality she wants to consummate the passion that ignites her.

Black Gospel

Dong-keun, Jun, You-mi, members of Korea’s only gospel choir Heritage, along with eight other people travel to Harlem to learn about gospel music and to perform with the Harlem gospel singers. As they go through series of lessons, they begin to realize that Black Gospel is not about brilliant techniques, nor beautiful voices; it is something that begins from the soul.

Mao Zedong 1949

The film is set in 1949, as the members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China prepare to establish a new Chinese state, the People's Republic of China.

Concorde

An Anglo-French production, directed by Pierre Jallaud, and for Open University Productions. This is a background sketch on the about-to-be-unveiled supersonic airplane.

Cerro Torre: A Snowball's Chance in Hell

Movie about David Lama climbing the Patagonian mountain Cerro Torre for the first time free, a mountain that has been dubbed the most difficult to climb in the world.

Running on Empty

Based on a true story, and recreated from the personal account of one of the robbers, the film follows an immigrant from mainland China in 1975 as he works with a team to plan to rob an armored car carrying seven million dollars from the Hang Seng Bank in Hong Kong.

Road for Two

Thirty-five years after their first meeting, which would change their lives, Argentine guitarist Lucio Yanel and his Brazilian pupil Yamandu Costa reunited to redo, on a trip, the paths that originally led Yanel to the interior of Rio Grande do Sul. Aboard a motor home, with his guitars and memories, master and disciple cross the border of Brazil towards Corrientes, the Argentine's homeland, reflecting on the transformations brought about by the inexorable passage of time.

Edna

On the edge of the Transbrasiliana highway, Edna lives in a land in ruins, built on massacres.

Desire Machine: 60 Years of Teatro Oficina

In six decades, Teatro Oficina has done more than revolutionize theatrical language in the country: the aesthetic influence of José Celso Martinez Corrêa's company extends from Tropicalism to the renewal of Brazilian audiovisual languages ​​from the 1960s onwards. The film revisits a story that it involves personalities such as Caetano Veloso, Glauber Rocha, Lina Bo Bardi, Chico Buarque and Zé do Caixão, brings together scenic art, ecology, architecture and sexuality, and mixes art and life in the search for a Brazilian based language.

Zimba

The trajectory and artistic imagery of actor and director Zbigniew Ziembinski (1908-1978), precursor of modern theater in Latin America and master of generations of Brazilian actors. The polyphonic montage builds on vast unpublished material, covering half a century of performances, teletheaters and interviews by Zimba, as he was known – before and after fleeing Poland, on the eve of the invasion of Warsaw – and recreates fragments of Wedding Dress , a play by Nelson Rodrigues which the Polish-Brazilian director won a revolutionary montage in 1943.

Paul Singer, Uma Utopia Militante

Professor Singer can be assessed as an enlightenment: he was also an educator, even (or above all) when he made politics. A major character in the intellectual life of São Paulo in the last seventy years, he narrates his trajectory, from his arrival in Brazil in 1940, escaping the Second World War, in 2016, in the leadership of solidarity economy movements. The film tries to show the beauty of a man thinking.

La danza de los Mirlos

The most recognized band of Amazonian Cumbia, Los Mirlos represents a synthesis of a musical genre that arises from ancestry, family and the exploration of other rhythms like 1960’s psychedelic rock. Together with their leader and singer, Jorge Rodriguez, we undertake a journey into the heart of Latin America.

Women Is Losers

In 1960s San Francisco, bright and talented catholic school girl Celina Guerrera survives a difficult home life by following the rules. That is until an indiscretion creates a series of devastating consequences. As Celina faces the compounded obstacles of being young and alone, she sets out to rise above the oppression of poverty and invest in a future that sets new precedents for the time.

Standing on the Line

In both amateur and professional sports, being gay remains taboo. Few dare to come out of the closet for fear of being stigmatized, and for many, the pressure to perform is compounded by a further strain: whether or not to affirm their sexual identity. Standing on the Line takes a fresh and often moving look at some of our gay athletes, who share their experiences with the camera. They’ve set out to overcome prejudice in the hopes of changing things for the athletes of tomorrow.

It Was All So Wonderful: The Everyday Magic of Mary Pratt

Feminist painter or traditional housewife? Displaced and isolated, Mary Pratt’s life was a highly complicated one of delicate rebellion. Award-winning filmmaker Kenneth J Harvey (Immaculate Memories: The Uncluttered Worlds of Christopher Pratt) reconstructs Mary Pratt's life from archival footage dating back to the 1950s, tracking Mary's development over time, while capturing her gentle humour, strength, beauty of spirit, and fascination with objects in the home, which she embraced and glorified, deeply touching and inspiring countless women through her artwork.

Is Sugar the New Fat?

Obesity is a disease that is spreading rapidly throughout the world, in both rich and poor countries. We used to think a high fat diet was to blame. In fact, refined sugar is linked to many preventable illnesses from childhood dental problems to diabetes, liver problems, stroke, heart attack, impaired brain function and obesity. This film argues that sugar is at the root of a global health crisis.

The Boy Who Found Gold

William Hart McNichols is a world renowned artist, heralded by Time magazine as "among the most famous creators of Christian iconic images in the world". As a young Catholic priest from 1983-1990 he was immersed in a life-altering journey working as a chaplain at St. Vincent's AIDS hospice in New York city. It was during this time that he became an early pioneer for LGBT rights within the Catholic church. "The Boy Who Found Gold" is a cinematic journey into the art and spirit of William Hart McNichols. The film follows his colorful life as he crosses paths with presidents, popes, martyrs, and parishioners, finding an insightful lesson with each encounter. McNichols' message as a priest, artist and man speaks to the most powerful element of the human spirit: Mercy.

Raúl Juliá: The World’s a Stage

Raúl Juliá: The World’s a Stage is a warm and revealing portrait of the charismatic, groundbreaking actor’s journey from his native Puerto Rico to the creative hotbed of 1960s New York City, to prominence on Broadway and in Hollywood. Filled with passion, determination and joy, Juliá’s brilliant and daring career was tragically cut short by his untimely death at age 54.