
The Ode to Joy
★ 6 · 2006 · 135m · Drama · History · War · Music
Based on the true story of the Bandō prisoner-of-war camp in World War I. It depicts the friendship of the German POWs with the director of the camp and local residents at the stage of Naruto, Tokushima Prefecture, in Japan.
More Like This

Haru
1996 · ★ 8
A young Tokyo businessman joins an online movie forum and develops a special bond with one of its members through back and forth e-mails.
More info →Oh! My Mother
1969
Writes Ando, "Oh! My Mother was the first work I made using a newly bought 16mm camera I had purchased with the writer Shuji Terayama in Paris. This piece was selected for the Oberhausen International Film Festival. In 1969, there were, of course, no video cameras like ones we see now, and color TVs were only found at broadcast television studios. I had just been employed at the TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System), and I often snuck into the studios after hours to experiment with the equipment. Oh! My Mother was made using the feedback effect, which is produced by infinitely expanding the image by looping the video."
More info →
The Shopworn Angel
1928 · ★ 9
Shortly after the United States enters World War I in 1917, a Broadway actress agrees to let a naive soldier court her in order to impress his friends, but a real romance soon begins.
More info →
The Tin Drum
1979 · ★ 7
In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.
More info →
Food and the Maiden
2010 · ★ 6.5
Young girl Saori, a cook at a diner, loves cooking. There is a regular customer Kujo, a guy who has never touched the plate of her cooking. Saori decides to give him a bag of sandwiches for him to eat at home, but later she finds that he gave it to a Buddhist monk on a street. She does not know that Kujo only eats what he cooked himself. A tragicomedy of 4 couples suffering about eating.
More info →
Two Portraits of MIYAGINO
2010 · ★ 7.8
In Edo-era Japan, a ukiyo-e artist languishes in his master’s shadow. Creatively stifled, he finds consolation in the company of a prostitute, and becomes entangled in a love triangle. A mystery emerges involving two portraits and the sudden disappearance of the artist Sharaku. Helmed by Cannes-selected director Tatsuji Yamazaki, the film employs kabuki-inspired sequences and stylised sets.
More info →
Seven Samurai
1954 · ★ 8.5
A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.
More info →
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
1974 · ★ 7.7
Emmi Kurowski, a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali. Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi's family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future.
More info →
Enemies of Women
1923 · ★ 6.5
The dashing but arrogant Prince Michael Fedor Lubimoff has to flee Tsarist Russia after falling into disgrace and settles in Monte Carlo, where he resumes his life of debauchery while World War I ravages the fields of Europe… (Partially lost film; reels 3 and 9 of a total of 11 are missing.)
More info →
Everything Is Thunder
1936 · ★ 5.6
The story, starring Constance Bennett and Douglass Montgomery, involves a Canadian POW being hidden by a German citizen during World War I.
More info →
Scotland Yard
1930 · ★ 7
A criminal fleeing a bank robbery has a chance encounter with a banker and his wife and takes a locket with both their pictures in it as a remembrance of the wife's stunning beauty. After enlisting for WWI to escape prosecution, his face is disfigured in combat, and plastic surgeons mistakenly give him the banker's face. As the banker is conveniently MIA, it gives the criminal the opportunity to plan a bank heist from the inside and also to get closer to the banker's wife.
More info →
The Great White Tower
1966 · ★ 6.9
The story contrasts the life of two doctors, former classmates and now both assistant professors at Naniwa University Hospital in Osaka. The brilliant and ambitious surgeon Goro Zaizen stops at nothing to rise to a position of eminence and authority, while the friendly Shuji Satomi busies himself with his patients and research.
More info →