20 best movies like Madadayo (1993)

A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of inter­generational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.

An eight-year-old boy is willing to do whatever it takes to end World War II so he can bring his father home. The story reveals the indescribable love a father has for his little boy and the love a son has for his father.

Set in Tokyo in 1940, the peaceful life of the Nogami Family suddenly changes when the father, Shigeru, is arrested and accused of being a Communist. His wife Kayo works frantically from morning to night to maintain the household and bring up her two daughters with the support of Shigeru's sister Hisako and Shigeru's ex-student Yamazaki, but her husband does not return. WWII breaks out and casts dark shadows on the entire country, but Kayo still tries to keep her cheerful determination, and sustain the family with her love. This is an emotional drama of a mother and an eternal message for peace.

Ryûhei Sasaki is keeping a secret from his wife, Megumi and his two teenage sons. Even though he leaves the house every day, he's not really going to work. He's going to an employment office. He recently lost his job due to outsourcing, but is determined to find another position, all while supporting an old friend who is also out of work. But when Megumi accidentally finds out Ryûhei's secret and doesn't tell him, her trust in him, and their marriage, suffers.

Shuhei Horikawa, a poor schoolteacher, struggles to raise his son Ryohei by himself, despite neither money nor prospects.

In this film director Yoji Yamada bows down before his teacher and role model. Yamada was assistant director on Yazujirō Ozu’s Tōkyō monogatari, a moving family portrait set after the Second World War. In his remake, Yamada has made very few departures from Ozu’s masterpiece in order to update the story of ageing couple Shukichi and Tomiko to present day Japan. Once again, the pair decides to leave their quiet lives in the country to pay a visit to their children and grandchildren in Tokyo. Once there, they discover that neither their oldest son, a doctor named Koichi, nor their eldest daughter Shigeko - who runs a beauty parlour - has time for them: both are too busy attending to their everyday concerns. Even the youngest son went his own way. The old couple feel lonely and bewildered in the fast-paced metropolis.

A young man Kentaro Saeki (Haruma Miura) keeps failing his bar test and does not know what to do any more. His older sister Keiko is a freelance writer. Kentaro and Keiko begin to search for information on their grandfather Kyuzo Miyabe (Junichi Okada) who dead in the special forces during World War II. Their grandfather Kyuzo Miyabe was terrified of death and obsessed with life. Why did he join the special forces? According to his fellow navy soldiers, Kyuzo Miyabe was a genius and also a coward. Kentaro and Keiko then discovers the shocking truth which has been sealed for 60 years.

Dylan discovers he has a knack for making paper planes. He has a chance to compete in a world championship, but he'll have to help rally his grieving dad, Jack, and face bullies and self-doubt to do so.

A young man Tomoya Nagase and a girl Mayuko Fukuda both learn that they have an untreatable illness and are nearing death. When one reveals that they have never been to the ocean, they embark on a comical adventure to see the sea.

Hubert is a French policeman with very sharp methods. After being forced to take 2 months off by his boss, who doesn't share his view on working methods, he goes back to Japan, where he used to work 19 years ago, to settle the probate of his girlfriend who left him shortly after marriage without a trace.

As a 13-year-old, fledgling writer Briony Tallis irrevocably changes the course of several lives when she accuses her older sister's lover of a crime he did not commit.

The personal tales of various sex workers who occupy a Japanese brothel.

Taking place during the full-moon night of traditional dances in August and set on the Japanese island of Amami-Oshima, the drama centers on a 14-year-old boy who finds a dead body floating in the sea. The young man enlists the help of his girlfriend to solve the mystery. The pair will learn to become adults by experiencing the interwoven cycles of life, death and love.

Nakamura Aoi stars as a young aspiring manga artist who's able to deal with loneliness and separation from his family through the companionship of an American Shorthair cat named Gin-o-gou.

The story centers on an elderly hibakusha, who lost her husband in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, caring for her four grandchildren over the summer. She learns of a long-lost brother, Suzujiro, living in Hawaii who wants her to visit him before he dies.

Set in the mid 1990s in Singapore, ILOILO chronicles the relationship between a family and their maid from Ilo Ilo, a province in the Philippines.

There were five Marines and one Navy Corpsman photographed raising the U.S. flag on Mt. Suribachi by Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945. This is the story of three of the six surviving servicemen – John 'Doc' Bradley, Pvt. Rene Gagnon and Pvt. Ira Hayes, who fought in the battle to take Iwo Jima from the Japanese.

This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta). When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.

The story begins with Makoto Segawa, a freshman at Meikei University. On the day of his university entrance ceremony, Makoto meets a fresh-faced, quirky girl named Shizuru. Makoto has a complex which causes him to shy away from contact with other people, but she succeeds in getting him to open up to her naturally. All Shizuru wants is to be with Makoto, so she takes up a camera too. The two spend their days together taking photos in the forest behind the campus. However, Makoto has feelings for another student named Miyuki. Shizuru decides that if Makoto likes Miyuki, she wants to like her too. She wants to like everything that he does. One day, she tells Makoto that she wants to take a photo of them kissing in the forest as a present for 'her birthday'. He obliges for her sake, and they kiss in the forest.

An acclaimed writer, his ex-wife, and their teenaged children come to terms with the complexities of love in all its forms over the course of one tumultuous year.

A story about the disappearance of Kirishima, a star athlete of the volleyball club, and how his disappearance affects every person in school.

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.

Tuur and Lambert are best friends. But the war is closing in and is about to change their lives forever. Tuurs dad joined the resistance and even his big brother seems so be part of it. Lamberts family on the other hand choose to obey the Germans. Then a new girls from the city shows up, befriending the boys but telling her secret to only one of them. A choice that separates the boys and ultimately gets her in trouble.

Sentaro runs a small bakery that serves dorayaki pastries filled with sweet red bean paste (“an”). When an old lady, Tokue, offers to help in the kitchen he reluctantly accepts. She will soon prove to have magic in her hands…

In a small Tokyo apartment, twelve-year-old Akira must care for his younger siblings after their mother leaves them and shows no sign of returning.

An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a râmen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.

High school student Yuki Hase (Kento Yamazaki) wants to become close with classmate Kaori Fujimiya (Haruna Kawaguchi) who is alway by herself. Kaori Fujimiya refuses to become close with Yuki Hase, because she forgets her friends every new Monday. Even though Kaori tells Yuki why she doesn't want to become friends, Yuki still wants to become close to her.

A police officer leaves the force in the face of harrowing personal and professional difficulties. Spiraling into a depression, he makes questionable decisions.

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.

Teenager Homer Macauley stays at home in small-town Ithaca to support his family while his older brother Marcus prepares to go to war.

As the Japanese surrender at the end of WWII, Gen. Fellers is tasked with deciding if Emperor Hirohito will be hanged as a war criminal. Influencing his ruling is his quest to find Aya, an exchange student he met years earlier in the U.S.

Jamie Graham, a privileged English boy, is living in Shanghai when the Japanese invade and force all foreigners into prison camps. Jamie is captured with an American sailor named Basie, who looks out for him while they are in the camp together. Even though he is separated from his parents and in a hostile environment, Jamie maintains his dignity and youthful spirits, providing a beacon of hope for the others held captive with him.

Fabienne is a star; a star of French cinema. She reigns amongst men who love and admire her. When she publishes her memoirs, her daughter Lumir returns from New York to Paris with her husband and young child. The reunion between mother and daughter will quickly turn to confrontation: truths will be told, accounts settled, loves and resentments confessed.

Anna, a young novitiate in 1960s Poland, is on the verge of taking her vows when she discovers a family secret dating back to the years of the German occupation.

An old couple, their only son, the son's wife, a young man and his lover live peacefully in a village. Then, a terrifying earthquake strikes that causes a nearby nuclear station to explode. The residents must evacuate, but the family lives on a farm, with only half of the area designated as an evacuation area...

Ryota is an unpopular writer although he won a literary award 15 years ago. Now, Ryota works as a private detective. He is divorced from his ex-wife Kyoko and he has an 11-year-old son Shingo. His mother Yoshiko lives alone at her apartment. One day, Ryota, his ex-wife Kyoko, and son Shingo gather at Yoshiko's apartment. A typhoon passes and the family must stay there all night long.

General store manager Akio (Tetsuji Tamayama) lives a carefree live in Okinawa with his dog, Kafu. One day he receives a strange letter from a woman named Sachi, but that’s not any person he’s familiar with. It turns out that the letter was a response to a joke wish he hung up at a Shinto shrine months earlier. Then one day, Sachi (Maiko) shows up and the two begin a relationship.

Sci-fi writer Sakutaro (Tsuyoshi Kusanagi) and bank employee Setsuko (Yuko Takeuchi) met at as high school freshmen during their summer vacation. Since that time, the couple has always been together and eventually married.One day, Setsuko complains of a stomach ache and is hospitalized. Sakutaro then learns that his wife has colon cancer. Sakutaro takes the advice from his doctor that laughter helps the immune system and proceeds to write a short story for his wife every day. At first, Setsuko was expected to live for only 1 more year, but she lived for 5 more years and Sakutaro eventually wrote 1,778 short stories for his wife.

Harry is a 23-year-old former boy band idol who is watching his younger brother Max, 16, follow in his footsteps. Harry has detoured on his way to a Japanese concert tour to escort Max on a long-promised camping adventure. Their trip begins on a note of camaraderie but quickly turns serious as old wounds resurface, forcing them to come to terms with their dysfunctional past--Harry's drinking problems, his disconnection from the family, and, most of all, his relationship with Max and the emotional dependency that keeps them from moving into adulthood.

When lovely and virtuous governess Henriette Deluzy comes to educate the children of the debonair Duc de Praslin, a royal subject to King Louis-Philippe and the husband of the volatile and obsessive Duchesse de Praslin, she instantly incurs the wrath of her mistress, who is insanely jealous of anyone who comes near her estranged husband. Though she saves the duchess's little son from a near-death illness and warms herself to all the children, she is nevertheless dismissed by the vengeful duchess. Meanwhile, the attraction between the duke and Henriette continues to grow, eventually leading to tragedy.

After finding out that her husband, Rudi, has a fatal illness, Trudi Angermeier arranges a trip to Berlin so they can see their children. Of course, the kids don't know the real reason they're visiting -- and the catch is, neither does Rudi...

Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss concerning two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.

The stories of several young women who work in a 'precision optical instruments' factory during the second World War. Despite illness, injury, and tremendous personal hardship, the women persevere in their tasks, devoted to their work and their country's cause.

Only three days before their high school festival, guitarist Kei, drummer Kyoko, and bassist Nozomi are forced to recruit a new lead vocalist for their band. They choose Korean exchange student Son, though her comprehension of Japanese is a bit rough! It’s a race against time as the group struggles to learn three tunes for the festival’s rock concert—including a classic '80s punk-pop song by the Japanese group The Blue Hearts called “Linda Linda”...

In the War's closing days, when a conscience-driven Japanese soldier fails to get his countrymen to surrender to overwhelming force, he adopts the lifestyle of a Buddhist monk.

The story of Florence Foster Jenkins, a New York heiress, who dreamed of becoming an opera singer, despite having a terrible singing voice.

Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.

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.

During WWII, the United States set up army bases in Great Britain as part of the war effort. Against their proper sensibilities, many of the Brits don't much like the brash Yanks, especially when it comes to the G.I.s making advances on the lonely British girls. One relationship that develops is between married John, an Army Captain, and the aristocratic Helen, whose naval husband is away at war. Helen loves her husband, but Helen and John are looking for some comfort during the difficult times.

Based on Akira Kurosawa's final unproduced script, this Edo-period drama takes place almost entirely inside an ocean-village brothel. O-Shin is a young brothel worker who one night helps a young samurai escape from his pursuers. Against the warnings of her fellow workers, particularly Kikuno and the brothel's owner, O-Shin falls in love with the samurai.