Movies: Bitters End

Four independent stories set in modern China about random acts of violence....

Three 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 hims...

Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director, still unable, after two years, to cope with the loss of his beloved wife, accepts to direct Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There he meets Misaki, an introverted young woman, appointed to dri...

Asako lives in Osaka. She falls in love with Baku, a free-spirit. One day, Baku suddenly disappears. Two years later, Asako now lives in Tokyo and meets Ryohei. He looks just like Baku, but has a completely different personality....

The life of Tao, and those close to her, is explored in three different time periods: 1999, 2014, and 2025....

Only three days before their high school festival, guitarist Kei, drummer Kyoko, and bassist Nozomi are forced to recruit a new lead vocalist for their band. They choose Korean exchange student Son, though her comprehension of Japanese is a bit rough...

It’s 1940, and the population of Japan is divided over its entry into World War II. Satoko, the wife of a fabric merchant, is devoted to her husband but is beginning to suspect he’s up to something. Soon she allows herself to be drawn into a game in ...

At Beijing World Park, a bizarre cross-pollination of Las Vegas and Epcot Center where visitors can interact with famous international monuments without ever leaving the city’s suburbs, a security guard betrays his dancer girlfriend by pursuing anoth...

As a decades-old state-run aeronautics munitions factory in downtown Chengdu, China is being torn down for the construction of the titular luxury apartment complex, director Jia Zhangke interviews various people affiliated with it about their experie...

An old couple, their only son, the son's wife, a young man and his lover live peacefully in a village. Then, a terrifying earthquake strikes that causes a nearby nuclear station to explode. The residents must evacuate, but the family lives on a farm,...

Two disaffected, unemployed Chinese youth drift through life on the streets of their industrial town, their paths crossing with that of a local young singer and dancer working for a liquor company as a spokesmodel....

An aging photographer's obsession with an early form of photography draws his assistant and daughter into a work of mystery....

Three sisters share a connection to a violent incident from their childhood reunite to for the chance to come to terms with their past....

Years after her boyfriend left her for the big city and promised to bring her there after he’s settled down, a Chinese woman sets out on a journey to be reunited with him....

An aging movie actor who is preparing to shoot a death scene finds himself visited by the spirit of a dead, long-ago lover....

Centaur lives a modest life with his family in rural Kyrgyzstan until he abruptly becomes the center of attention when he is caught stealing a racehorse at night. A story inspired by the myth when horses became the wings of men....

Toma lives in a small riverside town with his brutish father and his father's girlfriend. Witnessing his father's predilections for abuse, Toma becomes anxious that he will have inherited those urges....

This work is a 12-year story of Mana, a woman who cannot accept the death of her best friend, staring at her as she tries to step forward while having deep sorrow....

The slow collapse of the relationship between an out-of-work actor and his girlfriend....

"Ars longa, vita brevis" – art is long, life is short. This is one of Japanese music icon Ryuichi Sakamoto's favorite quotes, and the message that he leaves for viewers at the end of his final concert film, shot before he succumbed to cancer in March...