My Voiceless Friends

Wenn die Heide blüht

October 1960 •German

Girl's Reform School

February 1956 •Japanese

The day to day life in an establishment for delinquent teenage girls.

Five Fingers for Marseilles

April 2018 •English

Years ago, the young Five Fingers fought for the rural town of Marseilles against brutal police oppression. Now, after fleeing in disgrace, Tau, one of them, returns to Marseilles, seeking only a peaceful life. When he finds the town under new threat, he must reluctantly fight to free it.

Madadayo

April 1993 •Japanese

In postwar Tokyo, beloved writer-professor Hyakken Uchida retires and is buoyed through hardship by the fierce devotion of his former students, who honor him each year with a raucous “Not yet!” birthday toast. Told in warm, gently comic vignettes, Kurosawa’s farewell celebrates aging, friendship, and the sustaining ritual of teacher and pupils refusing to say goodbye.

Barefoot Gen

July 1983 •Japanese

A story about the effect of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on a boy's life and the lives of the Japanese people.

Barefoot Gen 2

June 1986 •Japanese

Three years after the Hiroshima bombing, a teenager helps a group of orphans to survive and find their new life.

Stray Dog

October 1949 •Japanese

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.

Gate of Flesh

December 1977 •Japanese

The background is Yuraku-cho in Tokyo and the film shows how desperately the women, who had led sheltered lives before the war, struggled to keep alive and the innate strength of post-war women.

August without Emperor

September 1978 •Japanese

Taking the Chilean coup as an example, a group of young officers plan to overthrow the Japanese government on V-J Day. They aim to abolish the post-war constitution, restore the national army and revive the traditional spirit of Japan. As the conspiracy is exposed, the coup squadrons are wiped out one by one. The remaining squadron takes over a night train bound for Tokyo.

Remember the Night

January 1940 •English

Unexpected love blossoms when an assistant district attorney agrees to take a recidivist shoplifter home so she doesn't have to spend Christmas alone in jail.

The Goodbye Kiss

February 2006 •Italian

Leftist radical-turned-terrorist Giorgio—hiding out in Latin America since the 1970s—turns himself in as soon as the Berlin Wall falls. Wishing to lead a comfortable, bourgeois life in his native Italy, he cuts a deal with a dirty cop, getting his sentence reduced in return for ratting former comrades out. Once released, Giorgio obsessively pursues his dream of becoming an upright citizen, but his old police aquaintance keeps dragging him down...

I Live in Fear

November 1955 •Japanese

An aging foundry patriarch, gripped by terror of nuclear annihilation, tries to uproot his family to Brazil. When they petition to have him declared incompetent, a family-court counselor witnesses his obsession slide into ruin—and asks whether ignoring the atomic threat is any saner.

The Idiot

May 1951 •Japanese

A gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and his possessive friend Akama. Kameda’s saintly compassion exposes everyone’s wounds, steering the quartet toward jealousy, violence, and inexorable tragedy. Adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel.

House of Bamboo

July 1955 •English

Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen and Japanese locals.

The Return of the Native

December 1994 •English

Eustacia Vye, an exquisite beauty despairing at her boring life on an English moor, sets up a fateful lovers' triangle when she uses her wiles to entice two men, a dashing suitor and a successful man who made his name abroad and returned to his home on the heath.

Early Spring

January 1956 •Japanese

A young Tokyo salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair.

Kabei: Our Mother

January 2008 •Japanese

Set in Tokyo in 1940, the peaceful life of the Nogami Family suddenly changes when the father, Shigeru, is arrested and accused of being a Communist. His wife Kayo works frantically from morning to night to maintain the household and bring up her two daughters with the support of Shigeru's sister Hisako and Shigeru's ex-student Yamazaki, but her husband does not return. WWII breaks out and casts dark shadows on the entire country, but Kayo still tries to keep her cheerful determination, and sustain the family with her love. This is an emotional drama of a mother and an eternal message for peace.

Ulysse est revenu

July 1978 •French

Dead Angle

July 1979 •Japanese

Elite college graduates commit perfect financial crimes though loopholes in the law during the 1950s.

Sayonara

December 1957 •English

Air Force Major Lloyd Gruver is reassigned to a Japanese air base and is confronted with US racial prejudice against the Japanese people. The issue is compounded because a number of the soldiers become romantically involved with Japanese women, in defiance of US military policy. Ordinarily, a by-the-book officer, Gruver must take a position when a buddy of his, an enlisted man, Joe Kelly, falls in love with a Japanese woman, Katsumi, and marries her. Gruver risks his position by serving as best man at the wedding ceremony.