Asian Cinema
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Nina Wu
Movie
After years of toiling in bit parts, aspiring actress Nina Wu (Wu Ke-Xi, who also co-wrote the script based on her own personal experiences) finally gets her break as the female lead in a big-budget espionage thriller. The role, which calls for nudity and explicit sex scenes, is made all the more...
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Poor Folk
Movie
A-Hong and San-mei, two migrants from Myanmar, live precarious lives moving between the sprawling metropolis of Bangkok and the remote border town of Dagudi. Desperate to raise enough money to rescue his younger sister from human traffickers, A-Hong turns to the drug trade. Meanwhile, San-mei wor...
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Ice Poison
Movie
Barely able to survive on their meager corn harvest, Xing-hong (Wang Shin-Hong) and his father make their way down from the mountains, hoping to borrow money from relatives. Eventually, they pawn their cow for a moped so that Xing-hong can earn a living picking up taxi fares. His first customer i...
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Trio
Movie
Han is a suicidal saxophonist, Mun is a violent simpleton with an IQ of 80, and Maria is a single mother with dreams of becoming a nun. Han has tried numerous times to kill himself, but nothing ever works. When he witnesses his wife's infidelity, it's the last straw. He gets a call from Mun and t...
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Stonewalling
Movie
20-year-old Lynn (Yao Hong gui) is told she needs English classes, flight attendant school and a go-getter attitude. She perseveres along this path of upward mobility until she finds out she’s pregnant. Indecisive and running out of time, she tells her boyfriend she’s had an abortion and returns ...
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People and Meat
Movie
In Seoul, three broke and lonely seniors form an unlikely bond and reinvent themselves as the infamous “dine-and-dash trio,” slipping into restaurants for expensive meals and then vanishing before the bill arrives. As their quest for free meat turns them into local celebrities, the friends discov...
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Passion
Movie
When Kaho (Aoba Kawai) and Tomoya (Ryuta Okamoto) announce their engagement at a celebratory dinner with friends, they are unprepared for the emotional turmoil that is unleashed once a prior infidelity comes to light. Later that evening, Tomoya is invited to the apartment of his former classmate,...
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Onimasa
Movie
Adapted from a semi-autobiographical novel by Tomiko Miyao, ONIMASA recounts the sophisticated tale of an uber-fierce yakuza boss (played with savage intensity by Tatsuya Nakadai) as seen through the eyes of his resilient adopted daughter. Kidnapping, prostitution and revenge are all meticulously...
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Tokyo Bordello
Movie
Sold into a Yoshiwara red-light district brothel by her destitute father, demure ingenue Hisano (Yuko Natori) soon learns the ways of her new world from the establishment’s top three courtesans. Her coming of age is a trial by fire as she rises up the ranks, while juggling lovers and her own pers...
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Murder on D. Street
Movie
The female owner of a soba noodle shop is found dead on D. Street. The police rule it a suicide, but the brilliant yet eccentric private detective Kogoro Akechi and his wife Fumiyo suspect foul play. Launching their own investigation, they observe strange goings on at a secondhand bookshop and di...
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Antiporno
Movie
Kyoko, a young artist with a sadomasochistic streak, wreaks havoc on everyone that she encounters, but her absolute worst behavior is reserved for her simpering older assistant Noriko, whom she routinely humiliates in increasingly kinky ways. That is, until their sense of reality gets upended in ...
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Aroused by Gymnopedies
Movie
Shinji, a middle-aged film director, is trapped in a seemingly hopeless cycle of creative crisis and self-destruction. After his failure making art films, he now finds himself shooting low-budget pornography as a means to get by. Over the span of one week, he embarks on a series of sexual encount...
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Dawn of the Felines
Movie
Three sex workers navigate the neon-soaked street of Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Each night brings new encounters – eccentric clients, dangerous fetishes, and the looming threat of police crackdowns – while each dawn finds them wrestling with loneliness, survival and the search for meaning in a city that r...
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White Lily
Movie
Celebrated ceramic artist Tokiko (Kaori Yamaguchi) takes Haruka (Rin Asuka), a troubled teenage runaway, into her home where she becomes her apprentice. When Tokiko’s husband dies, Haruka promises to remain by her side, and the two begin a romantic, but volatile relationship. Overcome by sorrow a...
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Green Fish
Movie
Released from his mandatory military service, Makdong (Han Suk-gyu) returns to a hometown he no longer recognizes. After rescuing a beautiful young woman from harassment on a train, his life takes an unexpected turn when she unwittingly lures him into the criminal underworld. Finding himself in a...
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Peppermint Candy
Movie
Yongho (Sul Kyung-gu) stares down an oncoming train as twenty years of his life flash before his eyes. Proceeding to move backward in time, Lee Chang-dong's acclaimed second directorial feature rewinds the protagonist's loss of humanity – from his fraught, self-hating middle age through his callo...
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Oasis
Movie
Fresh out of prison, Hong Jong-du (Sul Kyung-gu) finds an unlikely soulmate in Gong-ju (Moon So-ri), the daughter of the victim of the hit-and-run accident for which he went to jail. Wheelchair-bound and suffering from severe cerebral palsy, Gong-ju is kept cloistered in a cheap apartment by her ...
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A Spoiling Rain
Movie
In exchange for his overdue rent, Kutani, an out-of-work director in Japan’s declining adult film industry, is recruited by his landlord to evict Iseki, a struggling screenwriter. When a rain-drenched Kutani arrives at his door, Iseki invites him in to dry off. Over drinks, the men recount their ...
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Love Nonetheless
Movie
Secondhand bookstore owner Tada (Seto Koji) can’t forget Ikka (Sato Honami), a former colleague at his old job, despite the fact that one of his regular customers, Misaki (Kawai Yumi), persistently asks him to marry her. Meanwhile, Ikka feels overwhelmed by preparations for her wedding to Ryosuke...
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Seventh Code
Movie
Akiko (Atsuko Maeda) travels to Vladivostok, Russia to reconnect with Matsunaga, a businessman she met in Tokyo and has been unable to forget ever since. When she finally meets Matsunaga, he tells her not to trust anyone in a foreign country and abruptly leaves. When Akiko attempts to follow him,...
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Rude to Love
Movie
Momoko (Noriko Eguchi) is a 41-year-old housewife who has been married to her husband, Mamoru, for eight years. She meticulously maintains their home and devotedly attends to his every needs, but all her care and attention masks the emotional rift that has developed between them. Mamoru has grown...
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Agent of Happiness
Movie
How is happiness measured? Can satisfaction with one’s life be rated on a scale from one to ten? The Kingdom of Bhutan’s famous – and highly exoticized – government policy measuring its nation’s Gross National Happiness operates on the idea that the basic tenets of fulfillment can and should be q...
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Picture of Spring
Movie
Yumiko Haruno works as a waitress at a cafe that has been around for a long time. She spends her days aimlessly and without a dream for her future. On an ordinary day at her job, Yumiko notices middle-aged man Ichirou Haga looking intently at shunga (Japanese erotic paintings that were popular du...
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Wet Woman in the Wind
Movie
A tornado of unbridled sexual desire is unleashed when a free spirited seductress sets her sights on a reclusive playwright. Wet Woman in the Wind highlights the id in its stream of consciousness tale. Having a character who overturns the inhibitions of all that cross her path with wild abandon a...