© Scene from the movie 5 to 9

5 to 9 is a collaborative project by Daisuke Miyazaki (Japan), Rasiguet Sookkarn (Thailand),Tay Bee Pin (Singapore), and Vincent Du (China), united by the 2014’s Berlinale Talents program. The directors have remarkable track records and accolades at numerous international film festivals, and as envoys of their own countries form a collective to represent the modern world in Asian cinema.

© Scene from the Happy Hour

Synopsis

Happy Hour offers an intimate gaze into a close group of friends - Jun, Akari, Sakurako and Fumi – as they pass through the joys and tribulations that mid-life offers up to them. When Jun announces that she is seeking a divorce, the status quo of their friendship is shaken and each individual must confront the weight of repressed feelings in their own lives.

Each scene unfolds at its own course, almost in real time, allowing the delicate intricacies of communication to gently come to the fore, such that each encounter and passing event is endowed with rising emotional currents and complexities that are illuminated simply with unparalleled realism. Its moments of frank expression that cut through the veneer of civility and politeness are none other than revelatory

Director of the movie Happy Hour:

© Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Japan)

Ryusuke Hamaguchi, born in 1978, worked as an assistant director for three years, before studying at the Graduate School of Film and New Media in Tokyo where he made his first feature Passion (2008), followed by a series of fiction and documentary films such as The Depths (2010), The Tohuku Trilogy (2011-2013, with co-director Ko Sakai). Happy Hour is his first fiction film in three years.

© Scene from the movie THAT'S IT

Synopsis

Samao Daikoku is an orphan on the streets. However, his past catches up with him when he decides to reclaim his birth certificate. A valuable form of identity used for almost everything in Japan, the birth certificate is key to Samao’s chance at gaining a normal life. However his identity, along with many others, are held by a gang that Samao angers when he steals a hard drive. Beaten and tortured to reveal the hard drive’s location and its contents, Samao teams up with a similarly forlorn girl, Ami Nanmu, and the city’s other lowlifes to defeat the head of the gang and return peace to the streets once and for all.

Director Gakuryu Ishii’s singular form of cinematic frenzy, informed by his immersion in Japan’s Punk Rock circuits that has brought him cult acclaim, rings strongly in this new feature, where adrenaline overpowers narrative cohesion.

Director of the movie THAT'S IT:

© Gakuryu Ishii (Japan)

Gakuryu Ishii, born 1957, is a Japanese film director and professor of film at Kobe Design University. Formerly known as Sogo Ishii, this is his seventeenth feature and was screened in competition at the Raindance Festival in September. He is most well-known for Burst City (1982), a masterpiece of Japan’s punk scene.