Norwegian WoodMovies like Norwegian Wood
- Key Features:
- Suicide, Loss, Grief, Coming-of-age, 1960s, Student life, Love triangle, Mental health, Adaptation, Melancholy, Existentialism
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Literary adaptation fans, Art house cinema enthusiasts, Drama lovers, Fans of introspective narratives
- Emotional Arc:
- Melancholy → Confusion → Acceptance
Norwegian Wood

Toru recalls his life in the 1960s, when his friend Kizuki killed himself and he grew close to Naoko, Kizuki's girlfriend, and another woman, the outgoing, lively Midori.
Norwegian Wood
A tragedy strikes a young woman's life without warning or reason. She continues living while searching for meaning in a lonely world.

Set in Los Angeles in 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, is the story of a British college professor who dwells on the past and cannot see his future. We follow him through a single day, where a series of events and encounters ultimately lead him to decide if there is a meaning to life after the death of his long time partner, Jim.

A recovering drug addict is granted a day’s leave from rehab and returns to Oslo, where he reconnects with friends, faces the weight of his past, and struggles with uncertainty about his future. Over the course of one day, he drifts through encounters that reflect his longing for connection and his deep sense of alienation.

An obsessive-compulsive Japanese librarian living in Bangkok spends most of his days contemplating suicide in his apartment. His life changes when he witnesses the death of a young girl and becomes acquainted with her elder sister.

Two competitive friends, fueled by literary aspirations and youthful exuberance, endure the pangs of love, depression and burgeoning careers.

40-year-old Elling, sensitive, would-be poet, is sent to live in a state institution when his mother, who has sheltered him his entire life, dies. There he meets Kjell Bjarne, a gentle giant and female-obsessed virgin, also in his 40s.

Young-hee, an actress reeling in the aftermath of an affair with a married film director, escapes to Hamburg. But when she returns to Korea and meets with friends for drinks, startling confessions emerge.

Twenty-six-year-old Hiroto Suwa; his wife, Naho; and their old high school classmates—Takako Chino, Azusa Murasaka, and Saku Hagita—visit Mt. Koubou to view the cherry blossoms together. While watching the setting sun, they reminisce about Kakeru Naruse, their friend who died 10 years ago. Mourning for him, they decide to visit Kakeru's old home, where they learn the secret of his death from his grandmother.

The suicide of a former high-school bully puts the boy's father on a quest for answers.

In Japan's Aokigahara Forest, a troubled teacher meets a mysterious lost stranger who takes him on a life-changing journey of love and redemption.

In Seoul, a suicidal student meets a young woman who decides to join him in his fatal gesture. Dong-soo, an unsuccessful filmmaker, spots a beautiful young woman, who happens to be the lead actress in the film he has just seen. Their stories will cross paths thanks to their love for cinema.

While searching for his fiancee Ritsuko, Sakutarou rediscovers through flashbacks the void deep within him caused by the events from his high school days.

A year has passed since Menma's ghostly return to the Super Peace Busters. Although the time they spent together during that summer was short, the five members reminisce about what happened as they each write a letter to their lost friend.

Hiroko attends the memorial service of her fiancé, Itsuki Fujii, who died in a mountain-climbing incident. Although Itsuki's mother says that their old house is gone, Hiroko records the address listed under his name in his yearbook and sends him a letter. Surprisingly, she receives a reply, and discovers it came from his old classmate, a girl who also happens to be called Itsuki Fujii.

Theresa, a haunted young woman spiraling in the wake of profound loss, is torn between her fractured emotional state and the reality-altering effects of a potent cannabinoid drug.

Riko is an honest and hardworking man who can count on a group of real friends and a loving wife. Things change after he loses his job and experiences a midlife crisis.

A group of boys and girls, twelve in total, gather at an abandoned hospital to die for various different reasons. There, they find the body of a dead boy. The group of twelve attempt to find the person who killed the boy. During their search, the reasons why they want to die are revealed.

Amateur photographer Makoto and the homely but endearing Shizuru meet during their university entrance ceremony and become instant friends. Shy by nature, Makoto finds himself opening up around Shizuru, who is secretly in love with him.

A dying girl meets a nonchalant boy who found out her secret. She decided to fulfill her bucket list with none-other-than the boy who couldn't care less about the world.

Two 13-year-old boys spend an idyllic summer together, but their connection is put to the test when they become the subject of speculation at school.

At Kichijōji Station, Tokyo, Taku Morisaki glimpses a familiar woman on the platform opposite boarding a train. Later, her photo falls from a shelf as he exits his apartment before flying to Kōchi Prefecture. Picking it up, he looks at it briefly before leaving. As the aeroplane takes off, he narrates the events that brought her into his life...

With only a year left to live, 17-year-old Akito finds new meaning in life by bringing joy to a terminally ill girl who has just six months remaining.

A con man and a would-be filmmaking crew force themselves into the lives of two grief-scarred young women. But nothing is as it seems.

Popular, outgoing Fujino is celebrated by her classmates for her funny comics in the class newspaper. One day, her teacher asks her to share the space with Kyomoto, a truant recluse whose beautiful artwork sparks a competitive fervor in Fujino. What starts as jealousy transforms when Fujino realizes their shared passion for drawing.

On the third anniversary of a cult's failed chemical attack on Tokyo and their subsequent mass suicide, family members of those affected gather at the cult's former base on the shores of a lake to observe the anniversary of their loved ones' deaths.

A gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and his possessive friend Akama. Kameda’s saintly compassion exposes everyone’s wounds, steering the quartet toward jealousy, violence, and inexorable tragedy. Adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel.

While combing through the belongings of his recently deceased aunt, Matsuko, nephew Sho pieces together the crucial events that sank Matsuko's life into a despairing tragedy.

A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents.

In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die. If anyone should refuse they would disgrace their family. Old Orin is 69. This winter it is her turn to go to the mountain. But first she must make sure that her eldest son Tatsuhei finds a wife.

When 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a subway train it appears to be only the beginning of a string of suicides around the country. Detective Kuroda tries to find the answer to this mystery, which isn't as simple as he had hoped.

Haruki secretly had feelings for Akihiko for years, but Akihiko was still in a relationship with his roommate, the violinist Ugetsu Murata. Haruki, Akihiko, and Ugetsu's love clashes and starts to move forward.

A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens' boarding school. Slowly, they reveal themselves to each other, finding that they have something deeply in common.

When his young wife commits suicide with no explanation, an introspective pawnbroker looks back on their life together.

Two young men are seriously affected by the Vietnam War. One of them has always been obsessed with birds - but now believes he really is a bird, and has been sent to a mental hospital. Can his friend help him pull through?

Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They're all rather tight, or so they claim.

In Northern Norway during the 1860s, a little girl named Dina accidentally causes her mother's death. Overcome with grief, her father refuses to raise her, leaving her in the care of the household servants. Dina grows up wild and unmanageable, with her only friend being the stable boy, Tomas. She summons her mother's ghost and develops a strange fascination with death as well as a passion for living.

After two teenagers from abusive households befriend each other, their lives take a dark adventure into existentialism, despair, and human frailty.

The films spans two decades as the story unfolds in a series of flashbacks that begin when Qiyue and Ansheng were just thirteen. The two became inseparable until they met a boy who ended up tearing their lives apart.

An old man and a young woman meet in Tokyo. She knows nothing about him, he thinks he knows her. He welcomes her into his home, she offers him her body. But the web that is woven between them in the space of twenty four hours bears no relation to the circumstances of their encounter.

In a decript apartment, a young man watches as his father and a friend shoot an amateur porn film. Issues of morality, reality TV and friendship are explored.

Set in a future world. Japan has created a great medical technology that controls ethics, health, and social interaction to create a perfect world. Three young girls attempt to stand up to this by committing suicide, but it doesn't work. Years later, Tuan, one of the girls who attempted suicide must prevent a crisis that threatens this "perfect" world.

Twenty-year-old Matsuri Takabayashi learns that she only has ten years to live due to an incurable disease. She decides to not dwell on her life and not to fall in love—until she meets a man named Kazuto Manabe at a school reunion.

Neurosurgeon Koichi uses an experimental technique to enter the brain of his beloved Atsumi, who is in a coma after attempting suicide. In his quest, Koichi drifts steadily further into the sweltering marshes of the spirit. It is soon no longer clear what is real and what is not.

A conflict develops between a troubled Vietnam veteran and the sister he lives with when she becomes involved romantically with the army buddy who reminds him of the tragic battle they both survived.

Four women in their thirties reevaluate their relationships, both shared and private, after a startling revelation concerning one's marriage forces each of them to ask one of life's biggest questions: "Am I who I want to be?"

It’s November 1989 and the world is changing. So is Jarle, who attends Kongsgård High School in Stavanger. He plays the guitar/lead singer in a local punk band, has a great girlfriend, and has the coolest best friend. But it's all about to change when Yngve enters the classroom.

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

A story about director Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s parents who were both doctors, and his memories of growing up in a hospital environment.

Anita, a young woman with a troubled childhood and a hunger for love, finds a soul mate in Erik, a kindly college student.

Taeko and her husband, Jirō, are living a peaceful existence with her young son, Keita, when a tragic accident brings the boy's long-lost father, Park, back into her life. To cope with the pain and guilt, Taeko throws herself into helping this deaf and homeless man.

In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.

Overweight loner Rino spends his days in seclusion, until his dad rents a room to an overtly sexual girl who challenges Rino to break down his walls.

As a couple goes on a trip to find their way back to each other, a sideshow artist and his shady entourage emerge from the woods, terrorizing them, luring them deeper into a maelstrom of psychological terror and humiliating slapstick.

On a cold Monday morning, a group of counselors clock in at an old-fashioned social services office. Their task is to interview the recently deceased, record their personal details, then, over the course of the week, assist them in choosing a single memory to keep for eternity.

Two disaffected, unemployed Chinese youth drift through life on the streets of their industrial town, their paths crossing with that of a local young singer and dancer working for a liquor company as a spokesmodel.

The year is 1987 and Japan is just reaching the peak of its economic success. Eighteen-year old Yonosuke Yokomichi arrives in Tokyo from Nagasaki. Ordinary in every way possible, he lives in a suburb far from the excitement of the big city and commutes to a university in the center of Tokyo.

When Ninon found out that her neighbor and popular classmate Yuji only has one year to live. She decided to go out of her way and help him attain happiness on his remaining time.

A middle-aged Tehranian man, Mr. Badii is intent on killing himself and seeks someone to bury him after his demise. Driving around the city, the seemingly well-to-do Badii meets with numerous people, including a Muslim student, asking them to take on the job, but initially he has little luck. Eventually, Badii finds a man who is up for the task because he needs the money, but his new associate soon tries to talk him out of committing suicide.

A depressed man moves back in with his parents following a recent heartbreak and finds himself with two women.

In spring, a girl leaves the island of Hokkaido to attend university in Tokyo. Once there, she is asked to reveal why she wanted to go there in the first place.

After an older lady hangs herself in a church, a new psychiatrist discovers she was obsessed with the disappearance of his eight-year-old son, who vanished three years earlier. Meanwhile, three city dwellers are restoring a house when they realize it is haunted.

After failing his university entrance exam, Yuki Hirano sets his eyes on the role of a forestry trainee. Setting off for training he doubts his decision many times, but eventually after passing the training course, he is sent to Kamusari Village for a year of work experience - where he becomes assimilated with the beauty of nature and the warm-hearted people of the village.

The ghost of a lesbian high-school girl takes revenge on the people who used to bully her. And another young girl finds her old diary detailing her love and rejection when she was alive.

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.

Lukas, a young schizophrenic man, has to deal with a new town, a new relationship, and the paranoia in his head.

Mio is a girl in high school who slacks off. She and her childhood friend Arata and best friend Madoka spend their after-school days in Ikebukuro hanging out. One day, Madoka tells Mio that she loves Arata, and Mio realizes that she loves Arata, too. But she’s scared of their relationship falling apart and lies, saying she’ll help them. Mio deliberately acts coldly to Arata, and they get into a fight. She decides to work things out with Arata, but gets into a car accident on her way to meet him. She wakes up in a mysterious world. It's the Ikebukuro she knows, but something’s different...

A posthumous look at the last days of Guenther's life as he, his best friend, and his sister let loose on a four-day binge of alcohol, drugs, and sex.

Four stagnant high school teachers decide to test out a theory that maintaining a constant level of intoxication will improve their overall lives.

Kurumi’s heart was broken by the sudden death of her boyfriend in a tragic airplane accident. By melding futuristic technology with the binary equivalent of human emotion, a brilliant scientist created an ultra-lifelike robotic surrogate to take Hal’s place – and lure Kurumi from her shroud of solitude.

After his girlfriend commits suicide, a man becomes embroiled in gang warfare attempting to obtain a gun in hopes to kill himself.

Toshio hires Yasaka to work in his workshop. But then this old acquaintance, who has just been released from prison, begins to meddle in Toshio's family life.

One day a mysterious box arrived and a curse began to spread all over. The source of the box is 'Jukai Village'. The village is hidden in Jukai Forest, a suicide spot that once you enter it, you can never come out.

Three moments in Takaki's life: his relationship with Akari and their forced separation; his friendship with Kanae, who is secretly in love with him; the demands and disappointments of adulthood, an unhappy life in a cold city.

Charts the troubled teenage years of students Yūichi Hasumi and Shūsuke Hoshino, exploring the shifting and complex power dynamics of their relationship against the backdrop of Yūichi's love for the dreamy and abstract music of pop star Lily Chou-Chou.

A man with a troubled past is released on parole. He finds work as a church organist and develops a rewarding relationship with a priest and her young son. However, his past soon catches up with him.

While decluttering her home, a woman's hefty house renovation leads her back to the past when she uncovers her ex-boyfriend's belongings.

Takuma knows that his life is shorter than the others and he feels that his demise is getting near. He chose to stay away from the girl that he loves so that she can easily move on. What he didn't know is that he is under-estimating her.

The chronicles of four years in the life of Julie, a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, leading her to take a realistic look at who she really is.

Young teenager Bo is too sensitive for the hothouse atmosphere of a boarding school run by a cold, unfeeling would-be man of the cloth. Lonely and scared, he finds a soulmate in the headmaster's son Kim with whom he forms a bond of friendship... that slowly grows into something more.

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip with her friends to visit her aunt's ancestral house in the countryside. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

Two friends, Jung Jong-suk and Hwang Kyung-min, meet after several years and talk about their time in school, which left them scarred.

A young, aspiring filmmaker falls in love with a girl who moves into the house above his, but her sophisticated nature does more harm than good to him.

Man was made to be happy for simple reasons and unhappy for even simpler ones – just as he is born for simple reasons and dies for even simpler ones... Isa and Bahar are two lonely figures dragged through the ever-changing climate of their inner selves in pursuit of a happiness that no longer belongs to them.

Following a breakdown and suicide attempt, an aging actor becomes involved with a much younger woman but soon finds that it's difficult to keep pace with her.

Lorenzo works for a rent-a-friend company. One day, his services are required for suicidial businessman Alberto.

A young boy takes interest in piano while his family begins to disintegrate around him after his father loses his job.

When his girlfriend leaves for New York City on a 3-month-long internship, a strongly opinionated Berkeley arthouse movie theater manager begins exploring life as a bachelor.

Bruno is a young film editor who has just broke up his marriage with Regina, and returned living in his mother's house. Drowned in deep sorrow, something very weird happens in his life: people around him are gradually disappearing. But only for him. Some kind of blindness.

An intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.

While everyone thinks that Momo is a wild party girl, the reality is that she is shy and lonely. Can Momo confess her love to her classmate, Toji, or will her best friend Sae steal him away? It's a bittersweet drama of growing up and fitting in.

A man is broken hearted at the loss of his lover, then later visits the same pain on the next woman with whom he becomes involved.

Armed only with a bow and an ensemble of animal skins, Martin sets off into the forest in a misguided attempt to overcome his midlife crisis. A chance meeting with a fugitive named Musa leads to a twisted trip through the fjords with police, drug runners, and Martin's family not far behind. As an unlikely friendship develops and wildly original set-pieces unfold, Martin's quest for manhood leads to deep and hilariously uncomfortable realizations about the presumed masculine ideal.

Tokyo schoolgirl Hiromi and her friends engage in a practice known as enjo kosai, or "compensated dating", where older men pay young girls for dates. Hiromi plunges deeper into this world to raise money for an expensive ring.

The film spans 30 years in Julieta’s life from a nostalgic 1985 where everything seems hopeful, to 2015 where her life appears to be beyond repair and she is on the verge of madness.

Giovanni currently lives a dreary life of near non-stop work. At school, his peers ridicule him incessantly, and his employer at work is distant and cold. As his isolation from society becomes unbearable, he suddenly finds himself on a train heading far away from his miserable home. Accompanied by Campanella, an acquaintance from school, Giovanni embarks on a journey that will define the rest of his life.

Follows a young cyclo driver on his poverty-driven descent into criminality in modern-day Ho Chi Minh City. The boy's struggles to scratch out a living for his two sisters and grandfather in the mean streets of the city lead to petty crime on behalf of a mysterious Madame from whom he rents his cyclo.

After the suicide of his best friend and the fire of a local dance called Cromañón, including recitals, illegal parties in an abandoned warehouse and high school, a year passes by in the life of Zabo who writes everything he feels and lives in his blog, "Memories of a teenager".

In the immense city of Tokyo, the darkness of the afterlife lures some of its inhabitants who are desperately trying to escape the sadness and isolation of the modern world.

