Best movies like A Whistle in My Heart

Set in the near future around Shinjuku, Tokyo. Shinji got out from a youth detention center. Barikan suffers from stuttering and extreme shyness. These two men meet in a boxing gym. Shinji and Barikan become friends and pursue boxing under a hopeless situation.

In 1953, an innocent man named Christopher Emmanuel "Manny" Balestrero is arrested after being mistaken for an armed robber.

In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.

A story about the disappearance of Kirishima, a star athlete of the volleyball club, and how his disappearance affects every person in school.

The classic story of Emma Bovary, the beautiful wife of a small-town doctor in 19th century France, who engages in extra marital affairs in an attempt to advance her social status.

Anne is an orphan full of imagination. When she arrives at her new home she learns that sometimes you have to be a sensible person too; at the same time her unique character changes, or at least attracts, the people around her. The story covers Anne's growth from about eleven to seventeen years old as she makes friends, goes to school and studies. At a difficult point in her life, Anne will have to make a hard choice and perhaps find a new dream.

The girls are good friends at junior high school. Three of them seem to adjust and move forward upon entering high school, but the fourth of them is not having a seamless time of it. High school is not comfortable and the transition is full of memories, nostalgia and yearning. This is the story of a sixteen-year-old girl and also a camera. Kanazawa Shutter Girl picks up inspiration from the manga, and the subsequent movie, called Tokyo Shutter Girl and is helmed by one of its predecessor's's directors.

The story of one night in the lives of a group of young Native American men and women who have left their reservations and are now living in the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles.

A young boy named Jiro finds his mother and sister murdered in his home. Falsely accused of the crime, he flees from his village and meets a priest named Tenkai, who has him kill a rogue ninja named Tarouza. After fulfilling that task, Jiro undergoes training to become a master assassin. Many years later, Jiro finds out that he was an orphan and his real father was Tarouza, who had worked for Tenkai until he aborted his mission when he fell in love with an Ainu woman. The young ninja discovers that the Shogunate was to retrieve the lost treasure of Captain Kidd and use it to once again isolate Japan from the rest of the world. Using the clues that Tarouza had kept secret, Jiro - along with the female ninja Oyuki and a slave named Sam - travels to Russia and America to search for the treasure in hopes of using it to extract revenge from Tenkai.

A man who lived his life as he was told he should, not as he would have chosen to, is brought out of his shell by a beautiful young woman.

On the surface, the Kyobashis appear to be a happy family. Despite a family agreement that they are all open with each other, the entire household knows the opposite is true.

Working class New York bus driver Ralph Kramden is always coming up with get-rich-quick schemes for him and his best friend, Ed Norton, who's always around to help him get in (and out of) trouble.

A look at the relationship between a young blind samurai and his wife, who will make a sacrifice in order to defend her husband's honor.

The story of an ordinary family where upon the grandmother's death Kanji becomes an alcoholic homebody, Hinako begins acting up and smiling leaves the lip of Haruko. Those are not the only problems either.

An overworked career woman leaves her life in the city for an island vacation only to encounter eccentric local inhabitants.

Le Mirage is the perspective of a man in his thirties asking himself "what am I chasing?" Our society has become all about consumerism, if not excess. Success is determined by what and how much we have and "stuff" becomes the band-aid to a meaningless existence. Stuff fills the void of the existence we weren't meant to lead.

A disillusioned filmmaker has an encounter with a young woman who has a ritual of repeating "Tomorrow is my birthday" everyday. He tries to communicate with her through his video camera.

An ingratiating bride develops warm ties to her father-in-law while her cold husband blithely slights her for another woman.

Starting in 1970s Hokkaido, the film charts the moral descent of Detective Moroboshi over three decades, the young cop quickly gets a bit too cozy with the other side of the law when his senior colleague Murai teaches him the ropes and ruts of the police business. Soon, he swaggers and rants through the streets of Sapporo a lean, mean, sex‐crazy bully, indistinguishable from a yakuza.

Residents of the small town of Peyton Place aren't pleased when they realize they're the characters in local writer Allison MacKenzie's controversial first novel. A sequel to the hit 1957 film.

This tale takes place in a bar. The Spanish Alonso and his blind mother run this place. Bay, who is Alonso's friend live here too. This story tells something about Alonso and Bay and the "American Dream".

Babs Comet is employed by the classified ad department of the daily paper and uses her looks and position to get a husband.

Masashi is a photographer. He has his parents and an older brother Yukihiro. Through the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Masashi begins to take staged photos of his family.

A man has thrown away love and a woman has given up on love. The two souls meet in a brief summer in the northern city of Hakodate.

Based on Noda Satoru's manga, set in late-Meiji in Hokkaido where an ex-army soldier who aims for a huge amount of buried treasure left behind by the Ainu. In early 1900s Hokkaido after the Russo-Japanese war, Saichi Sugimoto tirelessly pans for gold. Nicknamed "Sugimoto the Immortal" for his death-defying acts in battle, the ex-soldier seeks fortune in order to fulfill a promise made to his best friend before he was killed in action: to support his family, especially his widow who needs treatment overseas for her deteriorating eyesight

The story tells the adventures of the boy, 21 emon, engaged in the management of a hotel belonging to his family for years. In his problems, 21 emons is helped by the robot Gonsuke and the little alien Monga.

Nikuko is a brash, jolly, scattered, and passionate woman in an otherwise sleepy seaside town in northern Japan. She’s also the single mother of 11-year-old Kikuko, who is her opposite in many ways. Kikuko is a string-bean of a young girl, pensive, quietly curious, and methodical in how she approaches life in this small harbor town. Nikuko embarrasses Kikuko as any mom of a preteen would, but Nikuko’s bold spirit makes her especially well-known in a town where Kikuko herself wants nothing more than to simply blend in. As Kikuko navigates the everyday social dramas of middle school, enhanced with touches of magical realism from her ever-present imagination, a shocking revelation from the past threatens to uproot the pair’s tender relationship.

Eric Liddell - China's first gold medalist and one of Scotland's greatest athletes - returns to war-torn China.

Fanny Kemble is a famous star of the English stage, but while touring the United States, she gives up her career to marry wealthy American Pierce Butler. Moving with him from Philadelphia to his Georgia plantation, Fanny sees slavery firsthand, and her outrage leads her to help the family's slaves in open defiance of her spouse. Undaunted by the consequences, Fanny eventually writes a book that strengthens the anti-slavery movement.

After graduating high school, Hiromi moves from the coastal town of Niigata to Tokyo in the hopes of becoming a famous actress. Her dream seemingly comes true as a manager scouts her off the street. He recruits her as a model but it's actually to be a "nude" model. It's not exactly what Hiromi was looking for, but she can't turn down the opportunity. As her career dwindles, the manager coerces her to make the jump to AV and Hiromi gains a new identity as Mihiro.

Sheila Levine - an innovative, bright, but painfully introverted individual - arrives in New York City to take an apartment with a partygoing roommate. There, she experiences love and heartache in equal measure.

The purportedly true story of a 23-year-old otaku (Japanese geek) who intervened when a drunk man was harassing a woman on a train. The otaku ultimately started dating with her and chronicled his event and his dates with the woman (who became known as "Hermès") on the Japanese mega-BBS 2channel.

An American intelligence agent is sent to Tokyo to track down a Communist spy ring.

Tsuneo is a university student working part-time in a mah-jong parlour. Lately the customers have been talking about an old lady who pushes a baby carriage through the streets. They say she is carrying something for a crime syndicate, and they wonder what it is she has in the carriage Money? Drugs? One day, the owner of the mah-jong parlour sends Tsuneo out to walk his dog. A baby carriage comes rolling down a hill and crashes into a guard rail. The old lady asks him to look into the carriage, where he finds a young woman clutching a knife. This is how Tsuneo first meets the girl who calls herself Josee.

Oliver Barrett IV is emotionally devastated by the death of his wife Jenny, and, while he tries to lose himself in his work as a lawyer, the long hours don't ease his pain, especially when he finds that his leftist views conflict with those of the senior partners at the firm. Eventually, Oliver's inconsolable grief begins to alienate those around him, until he finds new love with Marcie Bonwit, the wealthy and beautiful heiress to the Bonwit Teller fortune. Despite his affection for her, Oliver finds it difficult to leave the memory of Jenny behind, which causes major problems in their relationship.

Based on a 2016 novel by Mana Sakura, “The Lowlife” shows the stories of three women who work in Japan’s adult video industry.

On a desolate Navajo reservation in New Mexico, three young people – a college-bound, devout Christian; a rebellious and angry father-to-be; and a promiscuous but gorgeous Nádleehi (trans person)- search for love and acceptance.

Kanto, 14, a descendant of Japan's indigenous Ainu people, decides to visit a hole in the forest — a path to the other side of the world where dead people live, hoping to see his deceased father.

Kanao, a courtroom portrait artist, observes crimes, scandals and the decline of Japanese values without passing judgement. As he and his wife endure the tragedy of their first child’s death, hope slowly unfolds and their love story flickers to life once again.

Majime, an eccentric man in publishing company, who has unique ability of words, joins the team that will compile a new dictionary, ‘The Great Passage.’ In the eclectic team, he becomes immersed in the world of dictionaries. But the team is overwhelmed with problems. Will ‘The Great Passage’ ever be completed?

Based on the novel "Kanojo no Jinsei wa Machigai ja Nai" (literal translation: Her life is not at fault) by Director Hiroki, it is a powerful story of survivors, who are all trying to find their own silver linings in life.

A man, who is repaying a 30 million yen debt left by his brother, wins the 300 million yen lottery. He grapples with the question of whether money can buy him happiness.

The story of a young man who has felt since childhood utterly alien from others around him. Since that time he has learned to put on a face to hide his alienation. He feels incapable of belonging to the human society, especially so by society's refusal to take him seriously. He then follows a descent into alcohol, drugs, & suicide ...

Set in the traditional city of Kyoto, Japan, this deeply poetic TV movie revolves around Chieko who becomes bewildered and troubled as she discovers the true facets of her past. With the harmony and time-honored customs of a Japanese backdrop, the story becomes poignant as Chieko’s longing and confusion develops.

This western began in 1812 when the settlers tried to take away more and more territories from the indians. Tecumseh, who is the leader of the Shawnee indians, tries to do something. He plans a big indian state, and tries to win the English settlers over to this plan...

It is based on the story "The Lawyer" by attorney Hiroshi Masaki and his account of Japan's "Headless Murder Case" in which a police officer beat a suspect to death during the Pacific War.

Via the New York Times: "The solemn, intent faces of the Japanese schoolboys playing video games in Jun Ichikawa's "No Life King" bespeak a new type of modern horror. Addicted to their favorite new game (from which the film takes its title), these children have become seriously estranged from the real world. The film's constant emphasis is on the ways in which this has been allowed to happen, and on how emblematic it is of larger attitudes in a technological society. When a young boy trying to converse with his mother must compete with a home computer for her attention, it's not hard to see why the boy has retreated into his own computer-dominated world."

Akira Mochizuki survived a kidnapping as a child. Now, she's a detective, and there are signs that the kidnapper may be back again after 20 years.

Takeshiro Matsuura was a Japanese explorer who was the first person to document the inner reaches of what is now known as Hokkaido. He explored the area extensively during the mid 19th century and created a map of the island that included parts which had been ignored by earlier cartographers. He visited Ainu communities and compiled records of the large numbers of the population who had been conscripted for forced labor far from their homes. Matsuura suggested the name Hokkaido for the area

The Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people have seen their population dwindle and their culture threatened since coming into contact with non-Native Brazilians. Though promised dominion over their own rainforest territory, they have faced illegal incursions from environmentally destructive logging and mining, and, most recently, land-grabbing invasions spurred on by right-wing politicians like President Jair Bolsonaro. With deforestation escalating as a result, the stakes have become global.