Nobuhiko Obayashi

Fulfilling his filmmaking dream of 40 years, Nobuhiko Obayashi's luminous new feature "Hanagatami" delivers a timeless story of the pureness of youth beset by the chaos of war.

9th-graders Kazuo (boy) and Kazumi (girl) take a tumble at a temple in a small seacoast town in Japan. Through supernatural intervention, their minds and bodies are switched, and the result is a touching and hilarious coming-of-age comedy as they attempt to survive the pressures of junior high school life.

A Japanese boy and girl meet again at 15 at school after many years apart. They magically switch bodies. They are forced to switch lives as well.

A recently divorced writer is reunited with the ghosts of his parents who died when he was a boy. However, every time he sees them he loses more life energy. Now, he must choose between starting a new life or staying forever in the past.

A schoolgirl and six of her classmates travel to her aunt's country home, which turns out to be haunted.

After a failed romance, a temperamental young biker meets a carefree rural girl while riding through her island hometown and gets her obsessed about riding a motorcycle.

Follows two sisters, one clumsy and ignored, the other a perfect child. After the latter dies in an accident, she returns as a ghost to guide her little sister.

A high-school girl acquires the ability to time travel.

Lonely and love-struck, high-school student Hiroki pursues one girl but another one mysteriously appears in his life. Is she a figment of his lonely psyche, or real? An intricate triangle develops, and the viewer can't quite be sure what is happening until the whole story is neatly resolved at the end.

The film follows the life of Sada Abe, who became a celebrity in 1936 after strangling her lover and slicing off his penis.

Experimental short film depicting the life, perhaps real, perhaps a dream, of a young girl named Emi. Emi travels to the city where she encounters her counterpart, Sari, and falls in love with...a vampire?

The film is based on true events. It centers around Shunzo, a popular greengrocer who lives in a city near Tokyo. His life, and that of his wife, Michi and their two children, undergoes a dramatic change when he encounters Li, a poor college student from China.

Yuka Mitamura (Hiroko Yakushimaru) is a normal shy middle school student that has psychic powers. When a new student with similar powers begins to show her skills by stealing the student government election, Yuka and her friends vow to stop her. The election has uncovered something which will put Yuka's powers to the ultimate test.

It is 1965. High-school student Takeyoshi Fujiwara Yasufumi Hayashi) hears "Pipeline" by the Ventures, and is mesmerized by their unique sound. With three friends, he forms a band called "The Rocking Horsemen." A warm and comic glimpse into high-school and small-town life in Japan in the 60's.

An international school in Kobe, Japan is catapulted into the future after a time-slip occurs.

Summer 1937 Japan begins a war with China. Militaristic moods are growing in the country. A group of Japanese schoolchildren do not understand the militaristic hysteria of adults.

A high school girl travels to the island of New Caledonia and has magical adventures.

Colorfully edited vignettes of young characters having fun in the town of Onomichi.

The story centers on a group of young people who travel back in time when they are in a movie theater just before closing time. They witness deaths during the closing days of Japan's feudal times and on the battlefront in China before they are sent to Hiroshima just before the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of the city.

Four half-sisters share an unusually close bond during tumultuous times of post-war Japan.

Komori Tiaki is a budding tennis student. However, one day in training her coach hits the ball into her eye accidentally. She is taken to hospital but is advised that she will never regain the sight in her eye.

"Haruka, Nostalgia" Ayase Shinsuke, a girl's novels writer, visits his hometown Otaru. In Otaru he meets a young man that mysteriously goes by his real name. Directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi

A former hospital director runs an antiques shop in Ashibetsu with her family.

Ryoko visits brother-in-law Koji to recover from her time at a mental hospital. But she becomes increasingly convinced that Koji's eight year old niece Alice was responsible for her sister Fuyuko's death. Several horrific deaths follow.

Endo Reiko visits the city of Nagaoka and listens to a motley cast's stories. She learns about the fireworks in the city and its history, how war ravaged and changed the city and the narrator's lives. In the process much obscure information is offered and digested and there are hints of what constitutes the Japanese character.