Amiko
Directed by Yoko Yamanaka
Before Desert of Namibia, Yoko Yamanaka premiered Amiko, a story of teenage obsession and passion described as "a distant cousin of Louis Malle’s Zazie dans le métro” equally indebted to the DIY spirit of the Japanese self-made films (jishu-eiga) of the 1970s and 1980s.
A Tokyo greengrocer puts his livelihood at risk to extend help to a group of Chinese exchange students. A lesser-seen masterpiece from director Nobuhiko Obayashi (House) that chronicles the end of a decade marked by the Japanese economic bubble and the brutal close of possibility in China.
Lonely, alienated Sonya struggles to keep her family-owned funeral home afloat. Until an unexpected corpse lands illicitly at her doorstep. A powerful meditation on our universal longing for connection, Dwein Baltazar's Ode to Nothing is one of the most captivating arthouse horror films to emerge from the Philippines.