Riding Alone for Thousands of MilesMovies like Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
- Key Features:
- Father-son relationship, Estrangement, Terminal illness, Reconciliation, Cultural exchange, Self-discovery, Grief, Regret, Japanese cinema, China
- Tone:
- serious, restrained, poetic
- Target Audience:
- Fans of international cinema, Viewers interested in family dramas, Those who appreciate character-driven stories, Audiences seeking thought-provoking films
- Emotional Arc:
- Estrangement → Understanding → Acceptance
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles

Takada, a Japanese fisherman has been estranged from his son for many years, but when the son is diagnosed with terminal cancer his daughter-in-law, Rie, summons him to the hospital. Through a series of obstacles and relationships, he is brought unexpectedly closer to both an understanding of himself and of his son.
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles
Brash, loudmouthed and opportunistic, Kikujiro is the unlikely companion for Masao who is determined to see the mother he has never met. The two begin a series of adventures which soon turns out to be a whimsical journey of laughter and tears with a wide array of surprises and unique characters along the way.

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.

Prompted by the death of his father and the grief of his mother, a man recalls the story of how they met in flashback.

The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

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.

Ryota Nonomiya is a successful businessman driven by money. He learns that his biological son was switched with another child after birth. He must make a life-changing decision and choose his true son or the boy he raised as his own.

Wang Tiemei, a single mother, loses her job and moves, befriending neighbor Xiaoye who appears cheerful but is depressed. Their bond grows as Tiemei navigates relationships with her ex-husband causing trouble.

After her werewolf lover unexpectedly dies in an accident, a woman must find a way to raise the son and daughter that she had with him. However, their inheritance of their father's traits prove to be a challenge for her.

Every day, Jay travels the length and breadth of Tokyo in his taxi, looking for his daughter Lily. In the 9 years since he has separated from his wife, he has never been able to get custody of his daughter. Having given up hope of ever seeing her again, he is about to move back to France when Lily hops in his cab. But she doesn't recognize him.

Cheng, 45, a restaurant owner from China, has travelled with his young son halfway around the world to a remote village in Finland. His wife died recently in an accident, and Cheng wanted to have a break from everything by traveling with his son to see an old Finnish friend who lives on a farm in the countryside of Finland. It’s the most remote place Cheng can imagine with endless forests, thousands of lakes, a country with entire population of one-fifth of Cheng’s home town, Shanghai.

On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips with her mother’s terminal illness.

The story of a father's tireless love for his autistic son. A terminally ill father's attempt to teach his autistic son the necessary life skills to survive on his own before he passes away. It is also a poignant tribute to the infinite love that parents have for their children and their unending desire to take care and look after them to their best abilities, no matter the struggle, no matter the effort.

An elderly couple journey to Tokyo to visit their grown children, only to find them preoccupied and self-involved.

Three men living in the Eastern most island of China go on a road trip to the Western most end of the country, and facing crises of love, friendship, and faith on their journey to the West.

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 lonely, chain-smoking office lady in Tokyo falls for her teacher when she decides to take English lessons. When her teacher disappears, she sets out on a journey to find him.

Sandy, a geologist, finds herself stuck on a field trip to the Pilbara desert with a Japanese man she finds inscrutable, annoying and decidedly arrogant. Hiromitsu's view of her is not much better. Things go from bad to worse when they become stranded in one of the most remote regions on Earth.

Abandoned after coming out, Shun befriends Mio just before he has to move. Years later, Mio returns with a confession. How will Shun feel?

Two married couples adjust to the vast social and economic changes taking place in China from the 1980s to the present.

A washed-up stuntman and his stunt horse become an overnight social media sensation when their real-life fight with debt collectors goes viral.

Ogami Itto is challenged by a quintet of warriors, each armed with one fifth of Ogami's assassin fee and one fifth of the information he needs to complete his assignment.

Chen Sheng goes off in search of his nephew who has been abandoned by his father. Along the way, he encounters numerous people from his past and also those from his future.

A family gathers together for a commemorative ritual whose nature only gradually becomes clear.

A young father and his two children struggle to find harmony after his wife leaves them for another man.

A young Japanese woman named Yoko finds her cautious and insular nature tested when she travels to Uzbekistan to shoot the latest episode of her travel variety show.

The story follows a trio of Japanese youths of Chinese descent who escape their semi-rural upbringing and relocate to Shinjuku, Tokyo, where they befriend a troubled Shanghai prostitute and fall foul of a local crime syndicate. Like many of Miike's works, the film examines the underbelly of respectable Japanese society and the problems of assimilation faced by non-ethnically Japanese people in Japan.

A young man of Chinese-Cambodian descent dies, leaving behind his isolated mother and his lover of four years. Though the two don't share a language, they grow close through their grief.

Loner Diane Ford is a truck driver with an 11-year-old son, Peter, whom she never sees, and that's fine with her. But, when Peter's father, Len, falls ill, he asks Diane to take care of their son for a while. Eventually, Diane reluctantly agrees, but she quickly realizes that caring for a child interferes with her independent lifestyle - and Peter isn't all that thrilled with the arrangement, either.

Strangers in their own birthplace, 16-year-old Danny and 18-year-old Odysseus cross the entire country in search of their Greek father, after their Albanian mother passes away.

With dreams of diving abroad, Tsuneo gets a job assisting Josee, an artist whose imagination takes her far beyond her wheelchair. But when the tide turns against them, they push each other to places they never thought possible, and inspire a love fit for a storybook.

Put in charge of his young son, Ali leaves Belgium for Antibes to live with his sister and her husband as a family. Ali's bond with Stephanie, a killer whale trainer, grows deeper after Stephanie suffers a horrible accident.

A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods.

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.

Wada, a salary man, is enlisted to venture off to China to investigate a potential Jade mine. After his arrival, Wada encounters a violent, yet sentimental, yakuza, who takes the liberty of joining his adventure through China. Led on their long and disastrous journey to the mine by Shen, the three men come across something even more magical and enticing.

Ben Tyler has been diagnosed with cancer. With a grim chance of survival in the best case scenario even if he immediately begins treatment, he instead decides to take a motorcycle trip from Toronto through the Canadian prairies to British Columbia.

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...

When a series of martial misunderstandings spirals into an international incident, a Chinese martial arts student struggling to relate to his new Japanese wife is forced to take on seven of Japan's most powerful martial arts masters, each an expert in a different discipline, ranging from karate to samurai to ninjitsu.

An old postman has spent his whole life delivering mail to the mountain of Hunan and is about to retire, his only son due to take over his duties.

November 1999. 67-year-old Trond lives in new-found solitude and looks forward to spending New Year's Eve 2000 alone. As winter arrives he discovers he has a neighbor, a man Trond knew back in 1948, the summer he turned 15 and the summer Trond's father prepared him to carry the burden of his forthcoming betrayal and disappearance.

In a poor district of Edo lives a young samurai named Soza. He has been sent by his clan to avenge the death of his father. He isn't an accomplished swordsman however, and he prefers sharing the life of the residents, teaching the kids how to write etc. When he finally finds the man he is looking for, he will have to decide whether he follows the way of the samurai or chooses peace and reconciliation.

The story of a widower and his two sons, focusing on their complex and sometimes difficult relationships.

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

A black comedy about a farmer who tries to bring home the body of his friend, who died far from their town.

Masato is a young ramen chef in Japan. When he finds his late mother's journal after the sudden death of his emotionally distant father, he takes it with him to her native country, Singapore, hoping to piece together the story of his family and his life.

Takumi and his six-year-old son, Yuji, haven't come to terms with their wife and mother's death. One day, they meet a woman with an uncanny resemblance to her sheltering from the rain near their home.

After suffering a plane crash on a mysterious island, a young man embarks on an epic journey through forests, deserts and mountains trying to escape the shadow of a huge dark spirit.

A group of travelers is stranded in a small country inn when the river floods during heavy rains. As the bad weather continues, tensions rise amongst the trapped travelers.

A man reflects on the lost love of his youth and his long-ago journey from Taiwan to America as he begins to reconnect with his estranged daughter.

After suffering through a long and unsuccessful series of fertility treatments, Satoko and her husband Kiyokazu make the decision to adopt a child. Six years after adopting a boy they named Asato, Satoko has quit her job to concentrate fully on her husband and son. The family lives a peaceful existence until the arrival of a stranger.

When a son attempts to reconcile with his father, a series of fateful events allow him to experience the father's life in the past.

A father says goodbye to his young daughter. In time the daughter grows old, but within her there is always a deep longing for her father.

A tragedy strikes a young woman's life without warning or reason. She continues living while searching for meaning in a lonely world.

At a gas station in the middle of nowhere, a young man arrives to meet his father he hasn't seen for 30 years. On the same day, a van with four prostitutes breaks down at the very same gas station, on the way to Switzerland. The three days they spend together in the station change their lives forever.

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.

Overbearing mom, Jackie, travels cross-country to be with her son, Angelo, after he drops out of college to become a surfer. She meets a surf instructor who convinces her to try to accept her son's wishes and allow him to follow his dreams.

Ogami Itto battles a group of female ninja in the employ of the Yagyu clan and must eliminate a traitor who plans to sell his clan's secrets to the Shogunate.

Troy and his young transgender son Joe are on the run from his conservative mother in the Montana wilderness, with a detective in hot pursuit.

A Shogun who grew paranoid as he became senile sent his ninjas to kill his samurai. They failed but did kill the samurai’s wife. The samurai swore to avenge the death of his wife and roams the countryside with his toddler son in search of vengeance.

Pan Xiao, a young lawyer, goes to a rural small village settled in the western desert lands of China to handle the case of a falcon poacher who has ran over a policeman. Pan wins the case through sophisticated reasoning and forces the poacher to give him his car as a reward. Then, he just drives back home, but the return will not be an easy one.

A Japanese assassin stranded in Taiwan must take work from a local crime boss to make ends meet when suddenly a woman from his past delivers a son to him.

A study of the friendship between a Chinese woman and a fisherman who came to Italy from Yugoslavia many years ago, who live in a small city-island in the Veneto lagoon.

"Innocent face, D-cup breasts and perfect intercourse skills! Son, this is not your girlfriend anymore but your mother!" Ki-ho brings Yuki from Japan to marry her. However, he starts cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend in Korea. Min-cheol comforted Yuki and thought of her as his daughter-in-law, but one day he realizes he is looking at her as a woman. In the end, Yuki and Min-cheol have intercourse without Ki-ho knowing...

Daigo, a cellist, is laid off from his orchestra and moves with his wife back to his small hometown where the living is cheaper. Thinking he’s applying for a job at a travel agency he finds he’s being interviewed for work with departures of a more permanent nature – as an undertaker’s assistant.

Northern China, 2004. When miner Zhang Baomin returns to his home, a small and isolated mining village, his wife tells him that their son has mysteriously disappeared while shepherding his small flock.

A young man abandons his family for a solitary life of fly-fishing. His goal was to find his own way in the fishing world and thereby find himself and love.

The life of two men changed unexpectedly when Ajith, an Indian sailor who was robbed and lost everything, appears out of nowhere in front of Pierre, a single and grumpy Frenchman.

Single mom Laura, along with her awkward 14 year-old son Henry is forced to drive Jack, her estranged, care-free pot dealing father across country after he's kicked out of yet another nursing home.

Just when Lola, 18 years old and transgender, learns that she can finally have surgery, her mother, who is her only financial support, passes away. Abiding by her mother’s last wishes, Lola and her father, who are permanently in conflict and have not seen each other for two years, undertake a journey all the way to the Belgian coast. They realize the outcome of the journey may not be the one they were both expecting...

Ichi is a blind entertainer that travels the countryside with her traditional Japanese guitar and walking stick. She’s in search for the kind man that brought her up as a child, but because of her beauty she encounters problems every step of the way. Fortunately for Ichi, she is also a gifted swordswoman and carries a lethal blade within her walking stick.

Pursued by formidable Chinese assassins, young Kotaro and his dog run into No Name, a mysterious stranger who gets pulled into the chase. The unlikely companions form a bond over saving the dog from a poison attack, but chaos erupts when the assassins find Kotaro, and No Name must face his past before a horrible fate is met again.

Long is a Taiwanese killer known for his sword skills. After Long fails a Tokyo mission, he moves to a small town where no one knows about him.

While the Second World War rages, the teenage Mahito, haunted by his mother's tragic death, is relocated from Tokyo to the serene rural home of his new stepmother Natsuko, a woman who bears a striking resemblance to the boy's mother. As he tries to adjust, this strange new world grows even stranger following the appearance of a persistent gray heron, who perplexes and bedevils Mahito, dubbing him the "long-awaited one."

Xavier is a 40-year-old father of two who still finds life very complicated. When the mother of his children moves to New York, he can't bear them growing up far away from him and so he decides to move there as well.

The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped away from her husband by the lord. The husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to get her back.

Shuhei is leading a tough life. His alcoholic mother Akiko can only hook up with bad guys and order Shuhei to go get money from his disapproving grandparents instead of going to school. Except raising the little half-sister, his rock-bottom life seems to have no end.

A Chinese emissary is sent to the Gobi desert to execute a renegade soldier. When a caravan transporting a Buddhist monk and a valuable treasure is threatened by thieves, however, the two warriors might unite to protect the travelers.

Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.

Two outsiders, both shaped by the circumstances that have brought them together, forge a deep and lasting love.

Under the watch of his unkind realtives, lonely Bosse's luck is changed when he is sent to the land where his real father is the King. In that country, he sets out on a quest, together with his new friend, to destroy the evil Knight Kato.

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

A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.

To find Joseba, a dying friend, and see him reunite with his daughter Ely, two old friends, Jean Pierre and Tocho, embark with her on a road trip through the Sahara desert, from Spain to Mali.

Sugihara, a Japanese-born, third-generation Korean teenager struggles to find a place in a society that will not accept him.

A farmer and his wife live in a rural part of Inner Mongolia with their three children. Chinese population control policies prevent them from having any more. The farmer sets out for the nearest town to obtain birth control. He comes upon a Russian truck driver who has ended up in a lake. The farmer takes the man back to his farm, and after initially being appalled, the Russian becomes enchanted with the peaceful life of the countryside and decides to stay. But his presence presages big changes for the peasants.

An everyday conversation between Marta and her mother turns into a tragic race against the clock when Marta receives a phone call from Iván, her six-year-old son, who is on holiday in France with his father.

Zhang Chi, a hubris and dominating six-time racing champion, falls from grace following a crisis. After a five-year suspension from the motorsport, the now single-father to a six-year-old boy throws down the gauntlet once again.

The story of the journey of an adult hero to his Bata, a stern Russian peasant who became a father at the dawn of the nineties and raised his son the way all Soviet people did.

When a carefree bachelor is unexpectedly left in charge of a young boy, the two embark on a road trip that will change both of their lives.

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.

From the Atlantic to the Black Sea, Mathias and Philippe, two old friends, embark on a bicycle journey that Mathias’s son made before his tragic death. The two men ride through the ordeals with tenderness, humor and emotion.

A lively young boy befriends and attempts to raise an abandoned baby jackdaw unbeknownst to his choleric and disapproving father.

When a teenager suddenly disappears without a trace, the case is assigned to an alcoholic police officer who maintains a complicated relationship with his own troubled teenage son, suspected of drug trafficking.

A lonely beach on the southernmost coast of Brazil is the scene for two friends, on the brink of adulthood, to explore their understanding of themselves and one another. Martin has been sent by his father to retrieve what appears to be an inheritance-related document from the family of his recently deceased and estranged grandfather. Tomaz accompanies him, seemingly hoping to regain some of their former closeness. The two boys shelter themselves in a glass house, in front of a cold and stormy sea.

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.

François, a young thirty-year-old Asian, has not been back in his family for 10 years after a violent dispute with his father Meng. Since then, he has always tried to avoid questions about his origins, until he lies to believe that he has been adopted. But when he learns that he is going to be a father, he realizes that he will have to reconnect with his past and his origins. Pushed by his companion Sophie, he decides to reconnect with his family and returns to his XIIIth native district to announce the good news, accompanied by his best friend Bruno. François is welcomed with open arms by his family, with the exception of his father and his younger brother. The return to his community is not going to be so simple .

A man planning to commit suicide hires a taxi driver to take him to his jumping-off point.

A family of four are the sole inhabitants of a small island, where they struggle each day to irrigate their crops.

A look at the relationship between a young blind samurai and his wife, who will make a sacrifice in order to defend her husband's honor.

Jérôme Varenne, a French financier, lives and works in Shanghai with Chen-Li, his life and business partner. One day, during a short stay in Paris, while paying a call to his mother, he is very displeased to learn from her and his hated brother, that the family house in Ambray is going to be sold. Jerome decides to go to the town where he grew up to see what is going on. Little does he know how eventful his escapade will be. Little does he know that it will change his life from soup to nuts...
