Cinematic journeys through regions whose stories offer fresh insight into place, identity, and experience.
Films — by Strand
Journeys
All of a Sudden
Soudain, 急に具合が悪くなる
Joint Cannes Best Actress winners Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto shine in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s most unexpected journey: a life-affirming ode to friendship at the edge of mortality.
All the Lovers in the Night
すべて真夜中の恋人たち
Set against Tokyo’s quiet winter glow, a reserved proofreader finds an unexpected bond with a physics teacher in a delicate drama exploring isolation, desire, and the risks of emotional connection.
AnyMart
チルド
In the cold and conformist world of Japanese retail, convenience store clerk Sakai slowly awakens to the horrors of the system just as his orderly world of cheap consumerism begins to unravel with brutal consequences.
Black Rain
黒い雨, Kuroame
Shohei Imamura's appetite for the ugly, the brutal, the painful, is matched this time by a fully justifying subject — the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath.
Do You Love Me
A striking panorama of national collective memory told entirely through archive material in this playful, immersive journey through Lebanon’s history and culture.
Lost Land
Harà Watan
Using non-professional child actors, Japanese director Akio Fujimoto offers an unflinching portrayal of the Rohingya crisis and the struggles of refugees without a nation to call their own.
Nagi Notes
ナギダイアリー
With his trademark sensitivity, Koji Fukada turns a delicate story of friendship into a moving meditation on resilience, freedom, and the courage to embrace change.
Phantom Beirut
أشباح
Interweaving fiction and reality, Phantom Beirut's striking restoration refreshes a landmark of Lebanese cinema, bringing its vivid, haunting portrait of 1980s Lebanon to a new generation.
A Sad and Beautiful World
Nujum al'amal w al'alam
Romantic and sharp, this is a story of two souls bound by fate, a country on the brink of collapse, and a love story that refuses to give up on either.
The Samurai and the Prisoner
黒牢城
Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s exquisitely crafted samurai murder mystery finds a Lord and his captured prisoner work together to solve a series of shadowy murders inside the palace compound as civil war rages around them. An elegant and probing portrait of power, violence and honour, which world premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Sheep in the Box
箱の中の羊
Kore-eda's nuanced exploration of how grief manifests is distinctly Japanese yet universally resonant, in this empathetic consideration of how technology may serve as a vehicle for healing.