Season 1: Monstrous Realities
When the Bough Breaks 危巢
One of the most important female filmmakers in China, Ji Dan spent three years following a migrant worker family living on the outskirts of Beijing, as the family’s three children fight against all odds – including their own parents – to continue their education and pursue a better future.
A2
On March 20, 1995, members of Aum, a small Buddhist sect, released sarin gas into rush hour crowds in the Tokyo subway system.
Pietà 피에타
A young, solitary loan shark collects paybacks from customers with extreme brutality. While he maims and emotionally cripples many of his customers, their suffering leaves him cold. One day, a mysterious woman appears in front of him claiming to be his long-lost mother. Although he violently rejects her at first, he gradually accepts her into his life and allows her to change his ways.
Paranoia Agent 妄想代理人
A young woman appears to have been violently beaten by a mysterious assailant she believes to be a boy on roller-blades wielding a baseball bat. But as detectives chase the trail of the juvenile attacker, dubbed “bat boy,” uncanny connections between subsequent victims, including the detective himself, reveal the victims’ secret anxieties, in a surreal, biting critique of our urban selves.
Tetsuo II: Body Hammer 鉄男Ⅱ
Shot around the densely urbanized Tokyo landscape of concrete and steel, Tetsuo II is a classic 1990s cyberpunk film in the sci-fi (kaijû)/horror genre from the auteur director Tsukamoto Shinya (1960- ).
Taxi Blues 택시블루스
This movie offers a candid, compelling and at times uncomfortable glimpse into the lives of the approximately 70,000 taxi drivers operating in Seoul. Director Choi-ha spent a summer as a driver in this city of over 10 million people with a hidden camera placed under the rearview mirror.
Devils on the Doorstep 鬼子来了
During the last years of Sino-Japanese War, a Chinese villager becomes responsible for the lives of two prisoners from the Japanese Imperial Army—should he kill them or set them free?
