With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare’s King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa’s late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.

A spell of time in the life of a family living in rural Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo. Though her husband is busy working at an office, Yoshiko is not an ordinary housewife, instead working on an animated film project at home.

A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of inter­generational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But… to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.

Young artist Kyoko (Ami Tomite) wreaks havoc on everyone that she encounters, her worst being reserved for simpering older assistant Noriko (Mariko Trutsui), whom she routinely humiliates-or at least that's what seems to be happening, before an abrupt about-face. Outrageous rabble-rouser Sono's contribution to the Roman Porno redux series contains plenty of sex, but is also a fourth-wall breaking, experimental study of feminine agency set against outlandish, eye-popping backdrops.

In the year 2012 a comet approaches earth, threatening to end civilization when it impacts. On the streets of Japan, a single music store remains open, its proprietor insisting to his customers that the world is not coming to an end.

Both the final film of this period in which Akira Kurosawa would directly wrestle with the demons of the Second World War and his most literal representation of living in an atomic age, the galvanizing I Live in Fear presents Toshiro Mifune as an elderly, stubborn businessman so fearful of a nuclear attack that he resolves to move his reluctant family to South America. With this mournful film, the director depicts a society emerging from the shadows but still terrorized by memories of the past and anxieties for the future.

A pair of elderly junk collectors find their lives turned upside down when their latest procurement brings them into contact with an obsessive young knitter in the hallucinogenic feature debut of prominent short filmmaker Mai Tominaga.

Caniba is a film that reflects on the discomforting significance of cannibalistic desire in human existence through the prism of one Japanese man, Issei Sagawa, and his mysterious relationship with his brother, Jun Sagawa.

Ryo (UA) personifies water, since whenever something important happens in her life, it rains. She inherits a bathhouse and meets a pyromaniac named Yusaku. Their confrontation leads to an inevitable union, just like elements of nature blend together.

A female projectionist is haunted by the image of a small boy. Perhaps driven by insanity from a former abortion she goes on a killing spree, gutting women and removing their stomaches.

Nami hosts a late night home video program. She receives a tape which appears to be a real snuff film.

Due to his Western name, Tony was shunned by other kids and spent a solitary childhood. Though gifted as an artist, his drawings lacked feeling, so as an adult, he carved a career as a technical illustrator. Then in middle age, Tony suddenly falls for a pretty young woman, Eiko Konuma, who visits him one day on business. Eiko is like an angel in Tony's daily existence, and for the first time in his life, he feels connected to the outside world. However, Eiko does have one fault: she's a clothing shopaholic. Confusion also begins to develop when it appears that Eiko has a double.

Fuki who lives with her grandfather Shoei in Taketomi Island, Okinawa, dreams of becoming a cameraman. In her childhood, her mother Masami left Fuki to live in Tokyo. Although Masami has not come back, Fuki receives birthday cards from Masami every year on her birthday. On Fuki's fourteenth birthday, Masami promises to confess everything when Fuki becomes 20 years old. After her graduation from high school, Fuki moves to Tokyo to work as a cameraman assistant. Fuki starts off her hectic life in Tokyo, and soon, her nineteenth birthday comes. As usual, she receives a birthday card from Masami. A year later…

Yuuji, a yakuza who makes his living carrying out assassinations for a local crime boss in Taiwan, is barely scraping by when a woman from his past shows up with some unexpected baggage: his son. But does Yuuji have it in him to be a father?

Shochiku Studio of Japan commissioned several directors to create films reflecting on the themes of Ozu Yasujiro on the centenary of the director's birth.