Takashi Nishihara

A college student, along with her peers in Japan, rally to change the country’s hostile immigration laws that have incarcerated asylum-seekers in deadly detention centers. Meanwhile, over a century since the 1923 massacre of Korean people during a massive earthquake in Imperial Japan, young activists today take on the torch to seek justice under a government that continues to deny this history. A filmmaker documenting these young activists on the ground begins to excavate the underlying history of discrimination that connects the massacre of a hundred years ago and the draconian refugee system in Japan. Through the process of listening to voices from the past and present, the landscapes in Tokyo begin to echo the unfinished business of the nation’s reckoning with its colonial history.

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In a country ruled by the Liberal Democratic Party, running on austerity and neoliberal ambitions, for most of its postwar years, gender and economic inequalities have become increasingly acute in Japan. Takashi Nishihara, a filmmaker who has been following the youth protests in Japan notices that there is one party that seems to be raising issues of gender and economic in the political sphere, the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), a party about to enter its hundredth year and consistently burdened by its historical connotations. Though an outsider of the party, Nishihara gained unprecedented access to the JCP and driven by his interest in the younger party members who find hope in the JCP, the resulting documentary goes beyond party politics and observes the current grassroots leftist movements in Japan. It also becomes witness to the larger and deep-seated patriarchal system that continues to quell momentums of hope.

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Sisterhood portrays a current reality in Japan, showing the vision and lives of different people, such as a nude model, a music artist, a student and other diverse individuals who give their opinions in front of the camera.

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Inoue Momoko admires her late father, who was a pilot. She begins work as a co-pilot at a low-cost airline. Under Captain Shinkai Kohei’s instructions, who knew her father, Inoue Momoko works hard to become a captain and her boyfriend Umino Daisuke supports her dream too. One day, Inoue Momoko has a problem with a passenger complaining about the limit for carry-on baggage. At that time, Katsuki Tetsuya looks at the situation.

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This documentary follows the daily lives of blind and deaf people: deaf-blind people living alone on Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture; a man in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, who chose to live in his community despite the earthquake and tsunami; a young man in Hiroshima who wants to be independent so that he can marry while continuing to practice judo; Professor Satoshi Fukushima of the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology who became the first deaf-blind person to teach full-time at a university in the world.

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Nana is 19 and lives in a corner of Tokyo. Her birth mother and Marin, a girl the same age who she loves, were the only people she could trust. Nana confronts them in her yearning for love, but the world does not give it to her. With her whole life ahead of her, Nana struggles, suffers, and begins a search for the true meaning of love.

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A man and a woman at the mercy of fate.

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Sisterhood portrays a current reality in Japan, showing the vision and lives of different people, such as a nude model, a music artist, a student and other diverse individuals who give their opinions in front of the camera.

Open details →

Nana is 19 and lives in a corner of Tokyo. Her birth mother and Marin, a girl the same age who she loves, were the only people she could trust. Nana confronts them in her yearning for love, but the world does not give it to her. With her whole life ahead of her, Nana struggles, suffers, and begins a search for the true meaning of love.

Open details →

A man and a woman at the mercy of fate.

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