On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips with her mother’s terminal illness.
After suffering through a long and unsuccessful series of fertility treatments, Satoko and her husband Kiyokazu make the decision to adopt a child. Six years after adopting a boy they named Asato, Satoko has quit her job to concentrate fully on her husband and son. The family lives a peaceful existence until the arrival of a stranger.
The story follows the social intercourse between a cameraman, Masaya, with a visual impairment, and Misako who disconnects from the world.
A young woman working at a retirement home takes an elderly man living there on an excursion into the countryside, but the two wind up stranded in the titular forest.
Centres on Jeanne, a journalist tracking a mysterious rare herb that appears only once every 997 years.
In memory of the Japanese earthquake on 3.11, each director presents a 3 minute and 11 second short film in tribute to those who were lost that day.
Woodwork artist Takumi moves to the small village Asuka in Nara Prefecture. He remodels old homes and lives a peaceful existence with nature. Takumi then meets Kayoko, a woman who went to the same school as Takumi. Kayoko is fascinated with the color crimson. She dyes scarves with the color of hanezu. Kayoko lives with boyfriend Tetsuya, who works as an editor of a PR magazine. They live together. Soon, Kayoko falls in love with Takumi.
Saiko travels to Thailand but she jumps out of the cab after knowing the driver's intentions. However, her life changes after she meets Greg.
Tarachime is a documentary film which observes 'life' through childbirth. Kawase Naomi, a film director working under the theme of family, life and death, presents the bond of life through her own childbirth experience. "First, I was planning to film from the day I conceived a child and to the moment I gave birth. But I realized, while filming, that this is not the story of "one life." In the end, the film sublimed to a higher stage on which we can witness the knot tying one life with another."
The last piece of the trilogy, following 'Katatsumori' and 'See Heaven', filming her grandma and herself. Her gazes and insights are cast on the lovable beings in front of her eyes.
A diary film about Kawase's relationship with her grandma and her search for her father, whom she has not seen since her parents divorced during her early childhood.
About Tadashi Yoshimura's maternity clinic where he practice "natural births" deep in the forest of Okazaki (Japan).
Kawase tries to come to terms with her late father, whom she never knew when growing up, and contemplates getting a tattoo like his.
The sequel to Naomi Kawase's Katasumori. The film revisits Kawase’s relationship with her "grandma", capturing their love and attachment towards each other.
Filmmaker Naomi Kawase captures the love, loss, and loneliness felt as she prepares to move out of her foster mother's home.
One day, a mother who used to be hospitalized in Tokyo comes to Kashihara city in Nara prefecture to find her son. But the only clue she has is the digital camera which her son forgot at the hospital.
Kawase pays tribute to the grandmother that raised her after being separated from her parents as a child. The film teems with memories, but it is the faded, dusty photographs capturing the kindness in her grandmother’s shy smile that truly bring the woman to life.
Naomi Kawase returns to the mountains of her feature film Suzaku and portraits the people that inspired the movie.
