Zero Focus (Japan, 1961)

Kenichi and Teiko Uhara are one week newlyweds. Promoted to his company Hakuho Ad Agency's Tokyo headquarters, Kenichi heads on a short business trip back to Kanazawa, where he was that branch office's manager, to wrap up his business there, leaving Teiko alone in Tokyo to unpack their apartment. Although he is reported to have left Kanazawa to head back to Tokyo on the day planned, he doesn't come home on the scheduled day, without anyone in his and Teiko's personal life or his business colleagues knowing what happened to him.

Zero Focus unravels like an Hitchcockian ball of yarn, slowly putting the pieces together and never gives away too much. If this film had been made in the west it would've had James Stewart and Grace Kelly in the lead roles. Director Yoshitaro Nomura is considered as a pioneer of Japanese noir and also worked with Akira Kurosawa on The Idiot (1951), while himself directed as many as 89 films in total.

Genre: Drama/Mystery

Microhabitat (South Korea, 2017)

Mi-So has worked as a housekeeper for the past 3 years and she makes 45,000 won ($40) a day. Mi-So loves drinking whisky and smoking cigarettes. Her boyfriend is Han-Sol and he wants to become a webtoon writer. Even though Mi-So is poor, she is happy as long as she has whisky, cigarettes and her boyfriend. Unfortunately, the prices of cigarettes go up on the first day of the new year. Mi-So has to give something up and she decides to give up her apartment.

In my ongoing search for female directors I discovered this lovely work by Go-Woon Jeon, where she tackles the disconnect in urban society and focuses on a struggling woman, Mi-So. The setbacks keep piling up but Mi-So manages to stay afloat, moving from place to place and taking one day at a time. A film that deals with relatable, modern problems 

Genre: Drama

The Ghost of Yotsuya (Japan, 1959)

This horror tale relates the consequences of a Japanese legend which tells of a man who has to betray his wife in order to achieve power.

Based on one of the oldest ghost stories in Japanese mythology, The Ghost of Yotsuya blends dreamlike  and beautiful visuals with restless spirits and nasty gore. It's director Nobuo Nakagawa's (Jigoku) take on the rich kaidan folktales, and it comes off as not just a spooky ghost story but a strong Edo period film as well. If you love Kwaidan (1964) and want more of that, The Ghost of Yotsuya will quench any thirst for malevolent spirits and vengeful phantoms from beyond the grave.

Genre: Horror

The Inheritance (Japan, 1962)

A dying businessman intends to will two hundred million yen to his three illegitimate children, but his associates scheme to take advantage of the situation.

In 1962, Masaki Kobayashi (Kwaidan, Harakiri) crafted this slick and thought provoking story where everyone's driving force is greed. There's been many films where characters are double-crossing each other for the sake of more money but few treat the lust for wealth as such a natural instinct. Kobayashi's outstanding camera work is present full force and it's obvious how he reached the same heights as his western contemporaries such as Alfred Hitchcock.  

Genre: Drama

House of Hummingbird (South Korea, 2019)

Set in 1994 in Seoul, a touching coming-of-age drama centered around the quiet, unexceptional eighth-grader Eun-Hee. Struggling to make passing grades and subject to non-stop screaming at home, she spends her time finding meaning in the love and friendships of her peers, in shoplifting, and in karaoke bars. It's in her cram school professor Yong-Ji, however, that Eun-Hee finds the answers that she seeks, as the two form an unlikely friendship.

Female director Bora Kim drew a lot of inspiration from her own childhood when writing the coming of age drama House of Hummingbird, and she wanted to highlight the all too rapid modernization of South Korea through the eyes of a young woman going through her own early stages of womanhood. The cinematography was carefully designed to evoke the correct time period and when talking about camera techniques in an interview, Kim gave the following statement: "In terms of camera movement and shot size, we followed her face and emotions and her body movement. Eun-hee’s way of seeing life was our intention and we tried our best to be very honest about camera movement and camera language throughout the film because this film is a realistic film, and we didn’t just want to zoom in and move in the camera to make it fancy". 

A lot of film makers definitely has a very pretentious way of shooting their films so it's great knowing Kim didn't want to overthink it but instead rely on the characters to express themselves. House of Hummingbird won a slew of awards at film festivals around the world and hopefully paved the way for not only Bora Kim but other female directors as well in a male-dominated industry.  

Genre: Drama