Best movies like Fencing Master

The role of African Americans in the recovery years of the Great Depression is the subject of this informational short, which offers an idealized depiction of life in a segregated society. The highlight, by far, is rare footage of Orson Welles’s “Voodoo Macbeth,” produced in 1935 for the New York Negro Unit of the WPA’s Federal Theatre Project.

Harry is a shy hardware store employee. But whenever he takes a part in a local amateur theater production, he becomes the part completely--while on stage. Helene is new in town, a lonely itinerant telephone company employee. On a whim, she auditions for and gets the part of Stella to Harry's Stanley when the theater group performs A Streetcar Named Desire. Before anyone realizes the growing affection between Helene and Stanley, she falls deeply in love with the sexy brute, not knowing what the real man is like.

Setsuko, a 55-year-old single 'office lady' in Tokyo, is given a blonde wig and a new identity, 'Lucy,' by her young unconventional English instructor. 'Lucy' awakens desires Setsuko never knew she had. When the instructor suddenly disappears, Setsuko must come to terms with what remains--herself.

An out of work actor takes a role in a vampire porno.

After being dumped by his girlfriend, a man stuck in a deadend life decides to audition for a small role in a local community theatre's production of Cyrano de Bergerac. Despite having no experience as an actor, he lands the lead role, which wreaks havoc upon his life.

Roddy, first son of the rich Berwick family, is expelled from school when he takes the blame for his friend Tim's charge. His family sends him away and all of his friends leave him alone. Through many life choices that don't work out in his favor, Roddy begins to find his life slowly spiraling out of his control.

Before he hit it big, Takeshi Kitano got his start apprenticing with comedy legend Fukami of Asakusa. But as his star rises, his mentor's declines.

Out of work actor Joe volunteers to help try and save his sister's local church for the community by putting on a Christmas production of Hamlet, somewhat against the advice of his agent Margaretta. As the cast he assembles are still available even at Christmas and are prepared to do it on a 'profit sharing' basis (that is, they may not get paid anything) he cannot expect - and does not get - the cream of the cream. But although they all bring their own problems and foibles along, something bigger starts to emerge in the perhaps aptly named village of Hope.

Stage actors Della and Julian, while playing a series of one-night-stands, miss their train and the troupe on it. They move into a hotel. A fight breaks out.

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.

A Japanophile young Belgian woman in Tokyo falls into a whirlwind romance with a Francophile Japanese student, in this charming and tender tale of young love and cultural discovery.

A seriocomic feature about a playwright who feeds off his stubborn attraction to the wrong type of guy. When he attracts the attention of a newspaper columnist who will champion his work, success seems guaranteed until he meets her boyfriend.

Nozomi and Lana share an apartment in Tokyo. They have both auditioned for the same role in a movie, and know that the shortlist has been cut down to just the two of them. As they wait the night before finding out who will get the role, their personality clashes erupt into an all-out battle.

The year is 1987 and Japan is just reaching the peak of its economic success. Eighteen-year old Yonosuke Yokomichi arrives in Tokyo from Nagasaki. Ordinary in every way possible, he lives in a suburb far from the excitement of the big city and commutes to a university in the center of Tokyo.

The stage emulates life and compresses it, setting free skills learned over lifetimes in brief but dazzling displays for the amusement and judgment of others. For the performers, it is the ultimate risk, and some will rise while others must fall. Nowhere is this truer than at the Seisho Music Academy, where music, dance and real weapons all come into play in the creation of the next great Star. Karen and Hikari’s destinies have been linked since a childhood promise, but their journeys here have taken very different paths. Now, after Hikari leaves, Karen must discover who she is without her opposite, while Hikari must rediscover her own course. Nor are they the only girls who must reassess and change if they want to achieve their dreams, as the dance, magic, and swordplay continue!

Guy Jones (Irons) moves to a small British town and joins the local amateur dramatics society as a way to meet people. However he soon finds the drama offstage far outweighs those onstage.

A man and a woman committed double suicide in Kanazawa City. Immediately after the incident, Yoshiko Shiota, a woman living in Tokyo, contacts the local newspaper of Kanazawa, saying she wants to read the novel serialized in it by Ryuji Sugimoto. How did this woman know the novel is serialized in the newspaper? And why does she want to start reading it in the middle of the story? Which article was she actually interested in? Sugimoto cannot help making his own investigations about Yoshiko, but the more he searches, the more astonishing facts come to light...

German director Wim Wenders made this documentary in which he tries to explore the Tokyo that was depicted in the films of Yasujiro Ozu. When Wenders visits Tokyo for the first time, he finds a very different city, one with a booming fascination with technology that often clashes with the traditional elements of Japanese culture. Wenders also interviews Ozu's cinematographer, Yuharu Atsuta, and Chishu Ryu, an actor who frequently collaborated with Ozu.

The action never stops in this stunt-packed karate extravaganza of a black belt instructor who proves that his talents and expertise can be used to defend instead of destroy. The Instructor runs a local karate school and tries to impart to his students a sense of dignity along with the intricacies of the sport. When he is threatened by a rival school’s owner he puts his teachings into action. Through spectacular car chases and gripping hand-to-hand battles he tracks, pursues and corners his adversary

A bruised and battered corpse in Shibuya, Tokyo has the attention of the local cops. A veteran detective is assigned to the case. The last utterance of the victim is one clue that detective Imanishi has to work on. Yet, the case becomes more tangled quickly. Elsewhere, a prodigy named Waga Eiryo is composing an orchestral piece. Remake of The Castle of Sand (1974).

A single mother from the country raising a 6th grade boy comes to Tokyo, leaves the boy to live with his uncle's family, runs a struggling grocery store, and works a local inn. The boy befriends a girl, the daughter of the innkeeper...

NOIR transports you back to a time of black and white movies of the 30s, 40s and 50s. It's New York City, a single spotlight illuminates a detective sat at his desk, fog swirls around his feet as he lights his cigarette, jazz music echoes all around, Welcome to the world of NOIR. Veronica Smart is a beautiful 40-year-old woman married to her husband Cliff for 16 years, always wanting to be a star, she has now grown tired of the marriage and wants out. Meeting a group of teenagers at the local school she works, sets in motion a plan that will include seduction, passion, lies, manipulation and murder. Now available on Prime Video in the UK and USA.

A Filipino re-edit of the original Godzilla. Appears to have been edited in a similar fashion to the American King of the Monsters!, with the use of Filipino actors. No footage of this version has ever surfaced.

After the indomitable and beloved founder of a scrappy theater camp in upstate New York falls into a coma, the eccentric staff must band together with her clueless "crypto-bro" son to keep the thespian paradise afloat.

When an out of work actress unexpectedly lands a starring role in the sexually explicit mini-series adaptation of a best selling erotic novel, her aimless, stoner boyfriend does his best to be supportive. But when her volatile, Oscar winning co-lead takes "rehearsals" too far, her dream job becomes her boyfriend’s worst nightmare and the couple is forced to decide whether or not their relationship is worth fighting for.

Québec comedians Réal Béland and Stéphane K. Lefebvre take off for the land of the rising sun, Japan. In Nos voisins Dhantsu, they prove once again that no culture is too different to take on. Their travelogue, mostly limited to Tokyo, is at times well-planned and executed in tightly rehearsed situations, sometimes the scenes use local actors and crew, and then at other times the film erupts in the complete craziness of improvisational comedy. Nos voisins Dhantsu captures Béland's view of an ordered, modest and mysterious society, often by challenging the stereotypical order and discipline that we think of when we think of Japan.

Hamaguchi wrote and directed this film as a graduation project for the students at ENBU Seminar (film and theater school in Tokyo) when he taught there. It is a three-part film: The first part is a documentary-style production of a play; Then the actual full stage production of the play; and the epilogue. Poetry and written words play the central role in the movie.

While performing in a touring kabuki troupe, leading female impersonator Yukinojo comes across the three men who drove his parents to suicide twenty years earlier, and plans his revenge, firstly by seducing the daughter of one of them, secondly by ruining them.

Nagisa lost her twin sister, Sayo, two years ago. Every day she prays at a local temple in Tokyo to speak to her sister. One night, on her way home, a strange taxi driver picks her up and takes her to another world, the land of the souls where she goes on a journey to reach out to her sister one last time.

The female instructor Mariko gives yoga classes at a high-class club in Tokyo. She has a crush on Rika whom she gives private lessons to. When she notices bruises on Rika's body, Mariko learns that the young woman is involved in a highly abusive S&M relationship. On order to gain the affections of her student, Mariko decides to take revenge against the men in Rika's life.

A lesbian couple experiences microaggressions at a workshop upstate. Claire and her fiancée Monica embark from the boisterous streets of New York City to the Berkshires, where Claire has been invited to stage her latest work at a rural theater company. While Claire's actors question her ability to write heterosexual dialogue, Monica encounters her own source of micro-aggression in the form of Mutty, the groundskeeper.

Yuko has a rendezvous with her old boyfriend who has just returned to Tokyo. Blackmailers with evidence of this transgression force Yuko to work as a call girl to pay them. Yuko becomes the client of a foreigner who is in the employ of her husband, a prominent businessman.

A writer from Kamakura named Hiraoka Eisei is researching supernatural stories but finds himself revisiting memories from a previous visit to his wife’s home town. Ogura Kako,a shy local woman, is asked to help an actor from Tokyo practice speaking with Kyoto intonation and, after the lesson, he asks her to show him around Arashiyama.

Three young people in Tokyo. Kuro is a girl working a part-time job at a bakery. Eito is a photographer. Gou is a theater director. These three individuals meet by coincidence and, as a means to escape reality, begin living together at a deserted inn near the sea.

When Ayumi Mastuda (Eiko Koike) worked as a freelance writer she met Chinese cameraman Gyoukou (Kingone Wang), who worked at the same publishing company in Tokyo. They married 5 years ago. After his employer's went bankrupt, Gyoukou and Ayumi Matsuda moved to Ishigaki Island. Gyoukou also decided to apply for naturalization as a Japanese citizen. In order to prove they are real married couple they have an interview at a local Bureau of Judicial Affiars branch. As the interview goes along, they find it more difficult than expected ...