Northern Frontier

The Secret Key A girl finds a mysterious key.

Argent Short film premiered at the Sonoma County Library Film Festival.

Paper A visual poem about paper.

Bigfoot Finds a Friend Bigfoot meets a cat.

Francesca da Rimini

Meditation N. O. Scratch and painting on film, mostly on found footage. Very light and fast, kind of Zen of cinema.

JOINT After serving 2 years in prison, ISHIGAMI Takeshi (YAMAMOTO Yikken) spent two years working on a construction site and building up his funds before he returned to Tokyo with the help of Yasu, his best friend. He is determined to try and go straight but before he can do that, he has to raise even more money to break free of the criminal underworld and that requires a deep dive. He enlists his Korean friend Junghi and starts a business selling data for phone fraud to his Yakuza friend Yuki. As the business grows, Takeshi can just about make escape velocity, however, his old ties are holding him back and as a split in a yakuza family signals that start of a war, Takeshi finds himself getting dragged back down to the criminal underworld.

Sweet Bitter Candy Sanae (An Ogawa) is a high school girl preparing to take university entrance exams. She isn't very good at socializing. She wants to hurry up and become an adult, but it isn't going very well. Over summer vacation, Sanae's sister comes home from college in Tokyo, and her parents decide to hire a housekeeper. Yusuke (Hoshi Ishida), is rough around the edges and a little scary. The people close to him find him a mystery. As Sanae gets to know him, she begins to feel they have something in common. A journey through sweet love and bitter memories.

A State Is Born A short documentary, charting Bangladesh's quest for freedom from Pakistan.

Born to Be Human Yang Shi-Nan is a 14-year-old boy who undergoes a metamorphosis without realising what is going on. It begins on a normal school day when he gets stomach cramps. After rushing to the toilet he notices that his urine is turning bloody red. Taken to a doctor he is diagnosed with “Disorders of Sex Development,” or intersex. Without consulting him, Shi-Nan’s parents decide to accept “sex reassignment surgery”, turning Shi-Nan into a female and changing her name to YANG Shi-Lan. The family moves to a new city to start a new life and it all seems to be going well as Shi-Lan blends in and even makes friends. It seems like the butterfly is about to break out of its chrysalis but can Yang Shi-Lan truly embrace her transformation?