Conceited high schooler Momoko (Kyoko Fukuda) dreams of escaping rural life with her ex-gangster father and senile grandmother in Shimotsuma, Ibaraki Prefecture. Fantasizing about Rococo-era France, she spends all her money on frilly goth-lolita fashions from a fashion boutique in Tokyo. One day, while selling off some of her father's imitation Versace accessories, she meets Ichigo (Anna Tsuchiya), a rough-talking, motorcycle-riding girl gang leader. Against all odds the two become close, but when Momoko gets a chance to work for her favorite fashion designer she has to choose, for the first time in her sheltered life, between her comfortable dreams and her only friend.
Hilarious, crude, and strangely heartwarming, this flashy adventure in Japanese pop culture is hard to watch but impossible to forget.

The acclaimed director of Maborosi (1995), After Life (1998), and Distance (2001), stunned viewers in 2004 with this documentary-style portrait of four young siblings trying to survive in a Tokyo apartment as they hide from the eyes of their neighbors. After their immature mother deserts the children in search of her own happiness, the kids must try to make sense of life alone while maintaining the illusion of family and trying to uphold the stifling 'house rules': no loud voices and no going outside. Nobody Knows crafts a naturalistic child's-eye look at urban life in a uniquely dysfunctional family while avoiding simplistic solutions and tear-jerking cinematic clichés. Fourteen-year old lead Yuya Yagira became the youngest actor ever to win Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his performance.

[Image courtesy of New Yorker Films.]

Tired of her boring rural life and feeling alienated from her parents, seventeen year old Noriko (Kazue Fukiishi) runs away to Tokyo to try to meet friends she made through an internet discussion site. She soon finds Kumiko (Tsugumi), who works at a company that provides relatives-for-rent to customers that are willing to pay for a role-play illusion of home and family. Noriko's younger sister (Yuriko Yoshitaka) runs away as well, and the two girls begin to act in Kumiko's company, taking on new roles as they erase their old identities. When their father (Ken Mitsuishi) arrives in Tokyo to track his daughters down and reconstruct his family, their performed and 'real' identities become tied up in knots that don't unravel until the film's bloody conclusion. A sequel of sorts to Suicide Club (2002), a bizarre mystery about a string of mass suicides in Tokyo, Noriko's Dinner Table solidifies Sono's status as one of the most unsettling directors in contemporary Japanese film.

[Image courtesy of Tidepoint Pictures.]

Although several high-profile movies like Isao Yukisada's Go (2001) and Kazuyuki Izutsu's Pacchigi! (2005) have highlighted the issue of racial discrimination in recent years, Korean-Japanese director Sai's challenging and humorous drama marked a new era in the treatment of race in Japanese film. The story follows ethnic Korean taxi driver Tadao (Goro Kishitani) and his Filipina bar hostess girlfriend Connie (Ruby Moreno) as they try to make a living in Tokyo and weather the minor catastrophes that surround them.
According to film scholar Inuhiko Yomota, the film "literally and thoroughly defamiliarizes the official conception of Japan as a state with a homogenous people and a homogenous language." A box office hit in Japan, All Under the Moon swept the Japanese film awards, taking the top spot in the Kinema Junpo Best Ten and winning best film at the Japanese Academy Awards.

[Image courtesy of Cine Qua Non.]