Hitomi

An African-American man working at a slaughterhouse in the Watts area of Los Angeles leads a dissatisfied and listless existence.

The Yamadas are a typical middle class Japanese family in urban Tokyo and this film shows us a variety of episodes of their lives. With tales that range from the humorous to the heartbreaking, we see this family cope with life's little conflicts, problems, and joys in their own way.

This film follows the daily lives of a group of people barely scraping by in a slum on the outskirts of Tokyo. Yet as desperate as their circumstances are, each of them—the homeless father and son envisioning their dream house; the young woman abused by her uncle; the boy who imagines himself a trolley conductor—finds reasons to carry on.

The story takes place in a new residential area in the outskirts of Tokyo. A family photograph adorns the living room of the Hashimoto family. It is a heartwarming shot of the three family members from when they first moved here, finally having bought their own home that they had wanted for so long. Wife Michiko hangs the laundry everyday. Husband Ken-ichi leaves for work without a word. Son Hiroaki has a part-time job, returns home early and disappears into his room. The Hashimoto Family no longer eats meal together at the dining table or spends time together in the living room. Michiko yearns for a different relationship with her family and is gradually overcome by loneliness. While feeling pressured from the trifling matters that occur within the residential community, Michiko tries to fill the emptiness that she hides in her heart.

Gwyn Marcus has always wanted a marriage like her parents. She has just accepted the proposal of her boyfriend Matt, but she has misgivings about their future together. Her fear of commitment grows as she learns of the various affairs that her family is having. With her sister getting married and her brother already married, her mother is growing concerned about Gwyn's being the last single person in the family. But the more she thinks about marriage, the more she must search for the balance between career, marriage and family.

Twelve years after their beloved eldest son, Junpei, drowned while saving a stranger's life, Kyohei and Toshiko welcome their surviving children home for a family reunion. Younger son Ryota still feels that his parents resent that he isn't the one who died; his new wife, Yukari, is awkwardly meeting the rest of the family for the first time. Daughter Chinami strains to fill the uncomfortable pauses with forced cheer.

Rita, a middle aged New York City homemaker, finds herself in an emotional crisis which forces her to re-examine her life, as well as her relationships with her mother, her eye doctor husband, her alienated daughter and estranged son.

Alfred is 64. He's lost touch with his family and a threat to his health makes him realise he wants to make amends. The more he tries to do right, the more he does wrong, and as his past comes back to haunt him, he is forced to face up to what his life means to him. Rounding Up Donkeys is the second film in Sigma and Zentropa's three feature film concept 'Advance Party'.

After a long stint in gay conversion therapy, James, a young piano prodigy, returns home to his family farm and his emotionally-distant father, Richard. After Richard pressures James to give up his music career and take over the farm, James agrees as a way to make up for his past. Soon, however, James finds himself face-to-face with a former lover, Charlie, who wants to help him turn away from his new beliefs and family expectations and follow his dreams of studying music.

A teenage boy and girl discover a renewed sense of possibility as they go on a road trip to photograph lighthouses along the California coast.

Fathers & Sons is a comedic exploration of a group of men and their relationships with their fathers. A middle-aged Jewish man meets his father for the first time at the funeral of his mother. A south-Asian accountant introduces his white fiance to his father - a gay, Bollywood choreographer. A recently bankrupted Wall-Street broker has come home to borrow money from his music teacher father, and four brothers gather at the paternal home to pay their last respects and to collect their inheritance.

When Sarah Cain, a self-involved big-city newspaper columnist, travels to Pennsylvania for the funeral of her Amish sister, she soon discovers that she is the legal guardian of her five Amish nieces and nephews. Rather than choose to move to Lancaster County to finish raising them there herself, or let them be separated by the foster care system, Sarah decides to take them with her back to Portland where she believes she can make a new life for them. However, she soon realizes that the modern world has forced them to compromise who they are, and that she has moved them there for all the wrong reasons - a motive which is soon exposed - because secrets can really never be kept secret. In order to find her own redemption, she knows she must make a choice to give them back their lives in Amish Country. And whether she remains part of their lives will have a lot to do with how much she has grown to love them.

A young couple faces the realities of life with their child who is diagnosed with AIDS.

High school student Takumi lives with his two mothers in a beautiful house in Tokyo. Moving into a house across the street is Sora and her two fathers. One day Takumi and Sora begin a quest to seek answers long hidden and silent in their unconventional families. Takumi sets out to determine the identity of his father, and Sora devises a plan to integrate herself fully into her family. The ordeals of these households stretch the traditional notions of family, convention and tradition.

Mizuho takes over a restaurant in Nago, Okinawa, which was left to her by her grandmother. She single-handedly runs “Gajimaru Diner”, named after the large, deeply-rooted Gajimaru (banyan) tree in the area. Eventually, circumstances lead to her being brought together with an unknown traveler named Hayato, her ex-boyfriend Shota who returns after living in Tokyo for the past seven years, and a woman named Riko who shares something with both of them. As they work at the diner together, their relationships reveal themselves differently than what they had in mind.

Amachan is the 88th 2013 NHK asadora written by Kankuro Kudo (Tiger and Dragon, Unobore Deka). It's about Amano Aki (Nounen Rena), a 16 year old girl from Tokyo who goes to her mother's former home in Sodegahama, a fishing village in Kitasanriku, Iwate prefecture for the summer break. She falls in love with the sea and its people, and decides to stay on to become an Ama (women divers who fetch clams and sea urchins for tourists) just like her grandmother, Natsu (Miyamoto Nobuko). Her decision is welcomed wholeheartedly by Natsu and the other locals. However, her mother Haruko (Koizumi Kyoko) does not like the idea at first. She has a strained relationship with Natsu, and her extreme dislike of the sea, diving and the countryside is one of the reasons why she left her hometown 24 years ago. Eventually, she decides to stay in Sodegahama with Aki, considering that she is contemplating on getting a divorce anyway and does not want to go back to her husband in Tokyo. She also notices that it might be good for Aki for she seems livelier and happier in Kitasanriku than in Tokyo. The road towards becoming a full-fledged Ama-san is tough for Aki as she encounters tests and hurdles. One day, a video of her as an Ama gets uploaded in the city's tourism website, transforming an ordinary high school girl into an overnight Internet sensation. Suddenly she is called upon to use this opportunity to attract tourists to a city suffering from depopulation.

Teppan is a Japanese television drama that aired on NHK in 2010–2011. It was the 83rd Asadora. It starred a new actress, Miori Takimoto, in the role of a young woman raised by an adopted family in Onomichi who learns of her real grandmother and decides to move to Osaka to start an okonomiyaki restaurant. The title word "teppan" refers to the metal surface on which okonomiyaki are cooked. The series, while interrupted by the Tohoku Earthquake, averaged a 17.2% rating, making it the fourth most popular of the Asadora dramas in the previous five years.

The 56th NHK Asadora Renzoku Drama is Agri. Story's settings include Okayama and Tokyo (Ichigaya). This renzoku chronicles the life of a Showa period hairdresser, and is based on a true life story of Moshizuki Agri. Agri has worked for over 70 years as a beautician. She is a successful business woman who survived the war by becoming a farmer. During the war, going to the beauty salon was considered a frivolity, so many such businesses went bankrupt as Japan suffered from the energy spent as all the yen was fueled into the war effort.

In 1930 and as a young child, Tsuneko Kohashi lives at Enshu in Shizuoka Prefecture. She has a happy life with her parents and two younger sisters. Things change after her father dies from tuberculosis. Her father asked Tsuneko Kohashi to take care of the family in his place. Due to financial difficulties, her mother Kimiko decides to move the family to Tokyo where Tsuneko's grandmother lives.

The 77th NHK Asadora is Chiritotechin. Location includes Fukui prefecture. This renzoku is about Wada Kiyomi (referred to as Kiyomi-B), a girl brought up in Fukui who moves to Osaka in search of her soul. In Osaka, Kiyomi-B becomes enchanted with rakugo, a Japanese traditional form of comic storytelling, and pursues a career in rakugo. In the summer of 1982, Kiyomi-B and her family move to Obama of Fukui, her father's hometown. Kiyomi-B's grandmother and uncle welcome the family, but Shotaro the grandfather does not allow Masanori to take over the Wakasa lacquer chopsticks making. One day, Kiyomi-B listens to rakugo at Shotaro's factory and becomes fond of it. Shotaro and Kiyomi-B become close through rakugo.

The 69th NHK Asadora Drama, based on Rei Nakanishi's novel, is about the Iwata family living in Ikeda, Osaka City between 1950s and 1960s. The story is told through the eyes of the youngest daughter, Fuyuko. The family runs a bakery. The mother, Teruko, is a very energetic woman who is determined to make her dreams come true. Responding to Teruko's expectations, the eldest daughter becomes a figure skater and the second daughter becomes a very famous professional singer. In contrast, Fuyuko finds her joy in bread making.

Sakura is a Japanese serialized morning television drama that aired on NHK from April 1 to September 28 of 2002. The series totalled 156 episodes. It chronicles the life of Matsushita Sakura, a Sansei Japanese-American living in Hawaii. She moves to a small town in Japan to be an assistant language teacher for Japanese middle-school students. The show, lasting only 15 minutes long, is on every morning except Sunday, every week. Sakura first comes to Japan living with her grandparents; later, she moves because she has to teach English to the Japanese students. There she learns many valuable lessons and makes new friends.

The story is about a young woman who becomes a landscape gardener following her father's wishes. Wakaba, born and brought up in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, lived happily with her parents and younger brother until the Great Hanshin Earthquake shook and destroyed the city in 1995. In the disaster, Wakaba loses her father, who was an architect and moves with her mother and brother to Obi, old castle town in Nichinan, Miyazaki Prefecture, where her grandmother lives with her uncle and aunt. Living in Obi's rich natural environment, Wakaba learns that plants can heal people's hearts. She makes a resolution to return to Kobe and reconstruct the city abundant in greenery.

The 61st NHK Asadora Drama is Asuka. Set in Kyoto in the home of a traditional Japanese candy-maker, Asuka is the story of one young girl's dream to one day walk in her father's shoes and become a top candy-maker in the male-dominated world of wagashi (Japanese confectionery). Asuka grows to be a healthy, adventurous young girl with a deep curiosity and, a desire to become a candy-maker like her father. This NHK drama is one of the best in years with an excellent cast, a well-developed story based on extensive research into the traditional worlds of candy making and the tea ceremony in Kyoto, and beautiful scenery and settings in Kyoto and the surrounding areas.

The 12th NHK Asadora. Set in Amakusa, Kumamoto Prefecture, at the end of the Pacific War. Maki is the heroine, married to Shuichi who must go to war. She stays home and takes on the role of other war widows, managing business and a Chinese restaurant.

This is the story of a young mother, Kitayama Nazuna, and her son Taiyo from Ohma, a small town at the tip of a peninsula in Aomori. Taiyo's father, Murai Kento had aspirations to be a professional boxer but due to a detached retina he was forced to abandon his dream. Leaving Nazuna behind, he left for America, with another woman, to get treatment for his eye-problem, unaware that Nazuna was pregnant. As his life is boxing he quickly returns to the ring after the operation turns out to be successful and once again he dreams of becoming a professional boxer. However, success eludes him and he returns home to Japan. Nazuna meanwhile has given birth to her son and moved to Tokyo to search for Kento. By chance she finds Kento. When discovers he has become a father, he tries to make up for lost time. The show picks up their story as Nazuna, Taiyo and Kento begin family life together. Of course things are not as simple as they appear.

Mizuki is a would-be actress who has yet to attain her goal, struggles to keep the dream in her heart alive while dealing with the reality of her normal life, far away from lights, cameras, and action she longs for. Despite words of warnings from her family, which includes her birth and step mothers, intended to keep her from reaching her destiny, she actually makes it onto a set of one of the film companies in Tokyo. She experiences the peaks and valleys of a starting actress, but receives a blow when news of the company collapses and eventually closes. Mizuki returns home, but, the fire once lit, still burns.

The 7th NHK Asadora. Starring Tadashi Yokouchi in a narrative about an employee of the national railroad living through 50 years of modern history with his wife.

Starring Yōko Minamida as a woman who supported her family during and after World War II. All episodes are missing from the NHK archives, though a brief clip does survive as part of a contemporary news segment documenting the drama's production.

The 9th NHK Asadora. Starring Naoko Otani as a young woman living with her grandmother.