RETURNMovies like RETURN
- Key Features:
- Experimental, Short film
- Tone:
- restrained
- Target Audience:
- Film students, Experimental film enthusiasts, Visual arts aficionados
- Emotional Arc:
- ['Intrigue → Reflection']
RETURN

8mm work directed by Norihiko Morinaga.
RETURN
A human body gradually reconstructs itself as its various component parts crowd themselves into a small room and eventually, after much experimentation, sort out which part goes where.

A young man returns home for the weekend to discover the difficulty of juggling friends, parents, magic mushrooms and several thousand chickens.

A young woman from the future forces a local gunman to help her stop an impending alien invasion which will wipe out the human race.

A young couple purchase their new home to start a life together, only to find out the elderly couple next door have other plans for them.

After the title, a white screen gives way to a series of frames suggestive of abstract art, usually with one or two colors dominating and rapid change in the images. Two figures emerge from this jungle of color: the first, a shirtless man, appears twice, coming into focus, then disappearing behind the bursts and patterns of color, then reappearing; the second figure appears later, in the right foreground. This figure suggests someone older, someone of substance. The myth? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.

An experimental film, the last in Peter Kubelka's trilogy of “metric films”. Each frame of Arnulf Rainer is composed of darkness or light and silence or sound.

"Behind every strong man is a strong woman!", Mumine shouts as her husband is arrested. She has 4 children, she's in her mid-30s, and she's the wife of a Crimean Tatar political prisoner. Muslim Crimean Tatars have been oppressed for a long time. They were deported under Stalin, allowed to return under Gorbachev, and since the occupation of Crimea in 2014 under Putin, they are being persecuted again. "Return" is a portrait of Mumine and Maye, two strong women struggling with the consequences of oppression. Their traditional understanding of their role as women does not stand in the way of their dedication. They possess strength, beauty and dignity. Only in their most intimate moments, they are overwhelmed by desperate helplessness.

In a post-zombie world, where the infected live normal lives, their retroviral drug is running out.

‘RETURN’ follows Torstein Horgmo, Mikey Ciccarelli, Mons Røisland, Brandon Cocard, Brandon Davis, and Raibu Katayama as they push the boundaries of what can be accomplished snowboarding when innovative minds join forces.

A cardiologist tries to pinpoint the cause of her mother's sudden death, while her sister, a witness, claims malevolent demons are at play.

The lives of the residents of a small French town are changed when thousands of the recently dead inexplicably come back to life and try to integrate themselves into society that has changed for them.

The film is composed of receding planes in a landscape: a back garden and the houses beyond. The wooden lattice fence, visible in the image, marks the border between enclosed and open, private and public space, and forms both a fulcrum for the work and a formal grid by which the shots are framed and organised.

Shinji and Masaru spend most of their school days harassing fellow classmates and playing pranks. They drop out and Shinji becomes a small-time boxer, while Masaru joins up with a local yakuza gang. However, the world is a tough place.

The relationships among two pre-pubescent brothers and their estranged father are tested on a trip into the Russian wilderness.

Back from a tour of duty, Kelli struggles to find her place in her family and the rust-belt town she no longer recognizes.

Seemingly at random, the wings and other bits of moths and insects move rapidly across the screen. Most are brown or sepia; up close, we can see patterns within wings, similar to the veins in a leaf. Sometimes the images look like paper cutouts, like Matisse. Green objects occasionally appear. Most wings are translucent. The technique makes them appear to be stuck directly to the film.

After reading an article about hypnotic regression, a woman whose maternal grandfather died when she was only three years old contacts the hypnotic subject named in the article believing that he is the reincarnation of her grandfather, and hoping that she can learn the truth about how he died.

Joanna Mills has a successful career but feels her personal life is spinning out of control. She has few friends, an estranged father, and a crazy ex-boyfriend who is stalking her. Joanna begins having terrifying visions of a woman's murder, and it seems that she is the killer's next target. Determined to solve the mystery and escape her apparent fate, Joanna follows her visions to the victim's hometown and finds that some secrets just do not stay buried.

Young Haru rescues a cat from being run over, but soon learns it's no ordinary feline; it happens to be the Prince of the Cats.

After a fishing boat is attacked, the sole surviving crew member realizes it is none other than a resurrected Godzilla. However, efforts to bring the story to light are suppressed by the Japanese government amid growing political tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, who are both willing to bomb Japan to stop the monster.

A disillusioned filmmaker has an encounter with a young woman who has a ritual of repeating "Tomorrow is my birthday" everyday. He tries to communicate with her through his video camera.

A Japanese actress begins having strange visions and experiences after landing a role in a horror film about a real-life murder spree that took place over forty years ago.

A traveler is confronted by spirits in an abandoned shrine; a story of honor and firefighting in ancient Japan; a white bear defends the royal family from a monstrous red demon; ragtag soldiers battle a robotic force in futuristic Japan.

After the death of his father, a brilliant college student returns to his family home where he learns that the horrors from his childhood aren't as dead and gone as he once thought.

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.

Ean has a critical mission to return to the future to save everyone. However, she becomes trapped in the distant past while trying to prevent the escape of alien prisoners who are locked up in the bodies of humans. Meanwhile, Muruk, who helps Ean escape various predicaments, is unnerved when he begins sensing the presence of a strange being in his body. Traveling through the centuries, they are trying to prevent the explosion of the haava.

A nurse mistakes a stranger who pays her a visit for her blind date and soon, the man rapes her and turns her life upside down. The woman works to reclaim her life and exact revenge on her assailant after he's paroled from prison.

RETURN tells the story of a retired Green Beret who embarks on a healing journey from Montana to Vietnam. There he retraces his steps, shares his wartime experiences with his son, treats his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and seeks out the mountain tribespeople he once lived with and fought alongside as a Special Forces officer.

Two young children and an adult in a small town have an encounter with an alien spaceship. 25 years later the children are reunited as adults in the same town which is now beset by strange cattle mutilations. Matters become worse when the cattle mutilations are joined by human murders and mutilations.

Lynch's first film project consists of a loop of six people vomiting projected on to a special sculptured screen featuring twisted three-dimensional faces.

A detective investigates a series of murders. A possible serial killer might be on a rampage, since they all are in the same vicinity and by the same method, but as the evidence points toward the detective as the prime suspect, a ghost in red follows him, and he begins to question his identity. His realization of what seems to have really happened results in something much more sinister and larger in scope, and it leaves his psyche scarred.

A boy walks down the street and as he goes along his strides increase. Eventually he leaps over towns, forests, and oceans, seeing many things and surprising many people along the way.

Following some trauma in her past that has since been repressed, a young woman is trying to recover her memories with the help of a psychiatrist. During her hypnosis sessions, she repeats the name "Tomie" but is unable to recall where she knows it from. Meanwhile, a police detective is investigating a string of brutal murders, where he also runs across the name "Tomie." How are the two connected?

Young art student Hideo paints an unnerving portrait of Tomie, who whispers that she loves him. Inexplicably, he reacts by stabbing her to death with a painting trowel. Two friends, Takumi and Shunichi, arrive on the scene and help him dispose of the body. To cheer him up, the boys take the unwitting murderer to the nearest bar for a party... but a mysterious girl named Tomie shows up, bearing a few odd physical resemblances to the dead girl in the ground.

A teenager who went missing and was presumed dead returns home after eight years to find a family deeply affected by his disappearance. Gradually, doubts arise about whether he really is the missing boy or an impostor.

An exiled filmmaker finally returns to his home country where former mysteries and afflictions of his early life come back to haunt him once more.

Three surreal depictions of failures of communication that occur on all levels of human society.

A group of ruthless gangsters, an unknown woman and an escaped convict have met, in The Forest of Resurrection, the 444th portal to the other side. Their troubles start when those once killed and buried in the forest come back from the dead.

After twenty years away, Odysseus washes up on the shores of Ithaca, haggard and unrecognizable. The king has finally returned home, but much has changed in his kingdom since he left to fight in the Trojan war.

A tale of terror. Cathy Reed has been institutionalized most of her life because of Schizophrenia, as a child her parents thought she was possessed by demons and had her exercised by priests. Medical science saw different. Now decades later Cathy is freed, relocated to her own flat and given a chance to be independent. Once alone things are not what they all seem and when her nightmares turn real she questions her state of mind before she is left to face her demons.

Ryōko Itakura returns as the tough-as-nails government taxing agent. This time she must figure out a way to expose a fanatical religious cult lead by a corrupt sociopath.

A documentary filmmaker explores seemingly unrelated paranormal incidents connected by the legend of an ancient demon.

A former alcoholic returns home after ten years in prison for the murder of her husband. As her recollection of the murder returns, things take a different turn.

This is a hand-painted film which has been photographically step-printed to achieve various effects of brief fades and fluidity-of-motion, and makes partial use of painted frames in repetition (for "close-up" of textures). The tone of the film is primarily dark blue, and the paint is composed (and rephotographed microscopically) to suggest galactic forms in a space of stars.

A girl who went missing after an accident returns 10 years later and reunites with her grandmother.

An American journalist travels through 19th-century Japan to find the prostitute he fell in love with but instead learns of the physical and existential horror that befell her after he left.

Martial artist Takuma Tsurugi returns to take on a Yakuza family that may be embezzling money from charities to finance their own operations. Both the police and the Yakuza find themselves battling Tsurugi, but Tsurugi's fight ultimately is with the mob, and he concentrates on them.

A young woman returns home and must confront her ex-boyfriend when an unexpected tragedy occurs.

Masked thugs torture an innocent woman in increasingly brutal ways.

Young artist Kyoko wreaks havoc on everyone that she encounters when Japan's oldest major movie studio asks a batch of venerable filmmakers to revive its high-brow soft-core Roman Porno series.

Thomas, a father in his fifties, returns by chance to the town where he grew up. He collapses and wakes up forty years earlier in the body of his teenage self. Thrown back into his past, Thomas will not only have to re-live his first love, but also try to understand the reasons for his father’s mysterious departure. Can you change the past by living it again?

Koichi takes care of his sister, who has recently returned from a trip abroad in the United States as she is not well. While caring for her, he records evidence of ghosts in their home.

Luo Hongwu returns to Kaili, the hometown from which he fled many years ago. He begins the search for the woman he loved and whom he has never been able to forget.

A young girl, from a civilization that resides in deep underground tunnels, finds herself trapped in an inverted world and teams up with a resident to escape and return home.

A filmmaker talks about his work and love life with an unseen friend behind the camera. We also watch four of his short films.

Nishi is a loser who has a crush on his childhood girlfriend. After an encounter with the Japanese mafia, he journeys to heaven and back, and ends up trapped in an even more unlikely place.

Six high schoolers stuck in a murderous time loop must find the scattered remains of an unknown victim to break the curse and finally see another day.

A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling.

Mizuki's husband Yusuke has been missing for three years. He suddenly comes back home as a ghost and asks Mizuki to go on a trip with him. Their trip consists of visiting the people that helped Yusuke on his previous travel.

A young warrior and her familiar search for the sacred place said to fulfill wishes. It's best not to anger the ancient guardians and spirits.

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.

Fleeing heartbreak in the big city, Ichiko returns to Komori, her rural hometown. She battles summer's rain and humidity, bakes her own bread, grows hothouse tomatoes and tills the fields. During autumn, the time for pickling and preserving fish and sweet potatoes, Ichiko begins reaping rice and recalls her departure five years before.

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.

The story follows the social intercourse between a cameraman, Masaya, with a visual impairment, and Misako who disconnects from the world.

An archaeology student photographs a mysterious naked woman by a waterfall, unaware that she is a female demon called Haggia, who soon takes possession of him via a cursed amulet.

A gunfighter and a cowboy help a Mexican girl avenge the land-related murder of her parents.

Kyousuke and Madoka have finally arrived at the point where they are close to graduation and have to decide where they want to go to college. Naturally, they want to go together, so beside all the studying they also have to look for a proper college where they can enter both. Hikaru, still a year from graduating, wants to support Kyousuke as well and does that in her own way. But while she does that, Madoka feels jealous and tells her feelings to Kyousuke. And then Kyousuke has to take action to finally decide on the girl he loves.

In a dysfunctional family where the mother is a heroin addict and prostitute, beaten by her son, and the father is an ex-TV reporter, sleeping with his daughter and filming his son being beaten up, ‘Q’, a complete stranger enters the bizarre family, changing their lives for the better, finding a balance in their disturbing natures.

When a theater troupe's master visits his old flame, he unintentionally sets off a chain of unexpected events with devastating consequences.

After having narrowly escaped an attempt on his life at the hands of a psychopath, detective inspector Takakura quits active service in the police force and takes up a position as a university lecturer in criminal psychology. But his desire to get to the bottom of criminals’ motives remains, and he does not hesitate long when former colleague Nogami asks him to reopen an old case.

Marco and Anita discover they are expecting a child. Finally a ray of light in Marco’s life after his heartbreak following the loss of Leo, his first born with his former wife Clara. Suddenly, however Perla, the new owner where the couple lived until the tragic accident, bursts into Marco’s and his ex-wife’s lives. The mysterious woman claims she keeps feeling a strange presence and hearing the voice of a child that is tormenting her and her son. Marco therefore finds himself torn between the ties of the past and an unwritten future.

A dark comedy about a murder and its consequences presented in a backwards manner, where death is actually a rebirth. The film starts with an "execution" of the main protagonist and goes back to explore his previous actions and motivations.

Vicky recalls her romances with her exes Hao Hao and Jack in the neon-lit clubs of Taipei.

Koji Shiraishi interviews the survivors of an indiscriminate attack at a sightseeing resort and starts investigating the strange events that have been happening to them.

Carefully picked scenes of nature and civilization are viewed at high speed using time-lapse cinematography in an effort to demonstrate the history of various regions.

Fifteen years after his father's experiments with matter transmission fail, Philippe Delambre and his uncle François attempt to create a matter transmission device on their own. However, their experiments have disastrous results, turning Philippe into a horrible half-man, half-fly creature.

The Return is a 2016 documentary directed by Emmy Award winning director Erich Joiner chronicling Ford GT's return to 24 Hours of Le Mans after their 1966 1-2-3 victory.

Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star.

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.

Devastated at the death of her four-year-old daughter, a grieving middle school teacher is horrified to discover that her students aren't as innocent as she thinks.

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 a heartbreaking loss, a grandfather struggling to reclaim his passion for painting finds the inspiration to create again.

A 13 years old girl is forced to go living with another family for reasons unknown.

The prodigal son of a family in turmoil returns home to his French rural home to reconnect with his family and make sense of their dysfunctions.

Lina Inverse and Naga the White Serpent are back! What begins as a routine bandit-stomping turns into the adventure of a lifetime involving magical golems, an ancient Elven weapon and even someone bent on destroying the world. It's a predicament only Lina and Naga could get themselves in to.

Mitsuko, a young student, encounters a series of horrifying incidents set in alternate realities where people wind up dead in the most horrendous fashion.

Kazu works at "Funiculi Funicula" cafe. There is a mysterious rumour that if a customer takes a specific seat at the cafe, that customer can travel back to a time of their choice.

Jon Porter returns to his hometown after the sudden and bizarre death of his mother. He hopes to leave as soon as the funeral is over but it's too late. The sinister forces that caused his sister's brutal murder 30 years ago are back. Jon knows the nightmare can't continue. He must stand up to his fear and exorcise the demons who have risen again to take posession of his beautiful teenage daughter - body and soul.

France, 1809. Captain Neuville is called to the front, leaving his future bride heartbroken. Her sister decides to write letters on his behalf to cheer her up.

A man confronts his past during an experiment that attempts to find a solution to the problems of a post-apocalyptic world caused by a world war.

Humble, unassuming Ma and timid Cao have been cast off by their families and forced into an arranged marriage. They have to combine their strength and build a home to survive. In the face of much adversity, an unexpected bond begins to blossom, as both Ma and Cao, uniting with Earth's cycles, create a haven for themselves in which they can thrive.

After an impulsive travel decision to visit friends, Freddie, 25, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. Freddie suddenly finds herself embarking on an unexpected journey in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions.







