Nobuhiko Obayashi

When lightning strikes a theater about to close its doors, three moviegoers are thrust back in time to the world inside the screen.

Spring, 1941: 16-year-old Toshihiko attends school in the coastal town of Karatsu, where his aunt cares for his ailing cousin. Immersed in the seaside's nature and culture, Toshihiko soon befriends the town's other extraordinary adolescents as they all contend with the war's gravitational pull.

Relatives gather from afar in wintery Ashibetsu upon the death of patriarch Mitsuo. A mysterious woman named Nobuko suddenly shows up. Her appearance gradually exposes wartime secrets and Mitsuo's unknown past.

A comprehensive document of the six-month production of "Casting Blossoms to the Sky," mixing truth and fiction.

In the aftermath of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, a journalist arrives in Nagaoka, a city decimated during a WWII air raid and by the 2004 Chūetsu earthquakes, to report on the disaster; there, she learns about the experiences of its inhabitants and stumbles upon a stage play written by an enigmatic student of her ex-boyfriend.

Toshiko does not have long to live. She wants to make the most of her time while she can and takes a sojourn to where her true hometown for which she has so much nostalgia and admiration. With her husband on her side she remains can-do and keeps her chin up, but can only lament the passing of time and what will happen next to everyone and everything she loves.

It is the second work of the Oita trilogy of Obayashi . Following " Nigori Snow ", Ise Masazo draws a song written by composers and songwriter "Farewell of 22 years old " as a motif and draws a story of love that spans two generations of mother and daughter.

After his parent's divorce, Kazuo Saito moves with his mother from Onomichi and must leave his girlfriend behind. At his new school, Kazuo is surprised to reunite with his childhood friend Kazumi.

Four people are discovered brutally murdered in an up-scale high-rise apartment. All the victims appear to be family, but as the investigation deepens it is discovered that one of the victims isn't related to the family.

After his wife leaves him, middle-aged Yusaku contemplates suicide, but receives a call from old friend Kenichiro, whose wife is in a coma.

Travelling to his hometown, a stressed, middle-aged businessman dials an old classmate from a public phone, and reconnects with lost fragments of his youth.

Nobuhiko Obayashi's 2001 work "From the theme of Mahoroba". Obayashi filmed the works of Genjiro Ohno, a photographer who has been photographing the landscapes and people of Akita Prefecture for over 10 years.

Special message from director Nobuhiko Obayashi.

Film director Mario Baba meets a mysterious gentleman, and realizes he is a important man from his boyhood. The two chase each other around, causing a lot of commotion.

It is the 1950’s, and the protagonist, identified only as ‘I,’ has come from Tokyo to study, burdened by the high expectations of his poor family in northeastern Japan. He meets a young woman named Shino who works in a small restaurant in the Komagome area of Tokyo. They fall in love, and he takes her to his family home through the heavy snow for their wedding. He introduces Shino to his elderly parents and his sister; they spend their wedding night together listening to bells ringing on sleighs gliding past across the moonlit snow. The next morning, wrapped in their small world of happiness, they go to a hot spring in the mountains to begin their honeymoon.

Depicts the life of Nagaharu Yodogawa.

Absent-minded fifth-grader Yuta is sent to spend the summer with his grandfather, whom Yuta's parents think is becoming senile and could benefit from Yuta's companionship. At first, Yuta thinks Gramps is a bit addled, too, but as he gets to know the old man better, he finds that his grandfather sees things quite differently from others.

A heartwarming, based-on-true-story of how a hearing-impaired couple, Masahiro and Namiko, knew each other, got married and began participating in the Triathlon. The story is told in flashbacks as Namiko awaits childbirth.

On 17 May 1936–during a period of war, economic depression, public unease and growing militarism, a time of unrest and confusion when public opinion was, at best, unpredictable–Sada Abe killed and emasculated her lover. Condemned by the law, Sada finds herself lionised by the press and hailed as a 'saint' of love. Because hers was a crime of passion, the purity of her motivation elevates her from criminal to heroine.

The second TV movie Obayashi Nobuhiko directed based on Akagawa Jiro's Mikeneko Holmes series.

A detective film by Nobuhiko Ōbayashi. Made for TV.

People from all walks of life all receive mysterious messages from loved ones who were killed 3 months earlier in a shipwreck. They are instructed to go to a small island in the Inland Sea that evening.

A middle-aged journalist looking to make her big break. After working the same beat on the "women's page", Yumiko gets promoted to editorials.

With the help of a six-inch-tall ancient samurai warrior, a lonely young environmentalist finds self-confidence and new companionship in protecting Japan's beautiful naturality from human mismanagement.

Ayase Shinsuke, a popular writer of a series of girl novels, visits Otaru, the town he grew up in. He meets a strange boy who calls himself by the author's real name.

Film director Nobuhiko Obayashi went to Russia in 1992 and visited, with his crew, five families from five different cities and asked one member of each family to record their daily life in their homes on video. Using old lullabies as background, the documentary reveals the intimacy, joys, fears and expectations of these families.

It is 1965. High-school student Takeyoshi Fujiwara hears "Pipeline" by the Ventures, and is mesmerized by their unique sound. With three friends, he forms a band called "The Rocking Horsemen." A warm and comic glimpse into high-school and small-town life in Japan in the 60's.

The Kitao family is coping with the loss of the eldest daughter, Chizuko, who was killed in a freak accident the year prior. When the other daughter Mika is suddenly in a dangerous situation, Chizuko returns as a ghost to save her; reunited with her sister, Mika begins spending time with Chizuko again.

A single mother uses marriage as a business, a way to make money and put food on the table. She regularly patronizes a bar, where she's friendly with the manager, unaware that not only is the man involved with her daughter but he secretly prefers the mother!

This 150-minute documentary, directed by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi on the set of Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, features behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with cast and crew.

Shunzo is a popular greengrocer in a town near Tokyo. His life, and the lives of his wife Michi, and their two children, undergoes a dramatic change when he encounters Li, a poor college student from China.

A young woman moves in with her estranged father after her mother passes away.

A recently divorced writer is reunited with the ghosts of his parents who died when he was a boy. However, every time he sees them he loses more life energy. Now, he must choose between starting a new life or staying forever in the past.

An unreliable narrator recounts the love story of a loan shark, his wife, and their recently released from jail childhood friend.

An entire Japanese international grade school—and all within—are mysteriously transported to a foreboding desert wasteland. As the story unfolds, the diminishing student body weathers this apocalyptic crisis while searching for clues about their surroundings, and dealing with psychological breakdown and dangerous exterior forces.

During the fervently nationalist months leading up to World War II, a rebellious teenager is transferred to a new primary school in a small Inland Sea town. He vies with the school’s reigning bully, who takes a romantic interest in his older stepsister. When they learn she’s going to be sold to a brothel to pay off her father’s debts, they form an uneasy alliance to free her.

A Francophile filmmaker in a creative rut tries to pass off a free-spirited young actress as his movie-star wife in order to fool a chief from the South Seas.

Ko, a motorbike enthusiast from the city wandering the Japanese countryside, falls for the carefree local Miyo and teaches her how to ride. When Miyo proves herself a biker prodigy, Ko begins to fear she's destined to crash.

Four sisters with no consanguinity are living together since childhood. When facing misfortune and grievances in lives, they give support and encouragement to each other, even sacrifice oneself to help others.

Lonely and love-stricken high-school student Hiroki pursues a girl, but another one mysteriously appears in his life. Is she a figment of his psyche, or is she real?

A Japanese teenager travels to New Caledonia in search of the fabled "island closest to heaven" that her late father had told her about.

An 11-year-old boy who goes to Africa with his father in 1941. Because he is Japanese, the father is detained by the British. The boy joins up with a beautiful native girl, and the adventure begins.

After noticing in the news there was a fire in an old canal town, Eguchi recalls visiting there a decade ago as a university student.

Ken Ota is a Japanese-American GI. He comes to Hiroshima after WW2 looking for his big sister, but finds Keiko, a bomb victim with a keloid scar on her shoulder.

A legendary actress thought to be dead is discovered living in an isolated mansion. A screenwriter is tasked with writing her comeback film, which leads the two to live under the same roof.

Kazuko Yoshiyama is a third-year junior-high-school student. One day, while cleaning the lab, she smells lavender and faints. From then on, she has the power to travel through time.

Ryoko visits brother-in-law Koji to recover from her time at a mental hospital. But she becomes increasingly convinced that Koji's eight year old niece Alice was responsible for her sister Fuyuko's death. Several horrific deaths follow.

9th-graders Kazuo and Kazumi take a tumble at a temple in a small seacoast town in Japan. Through supernatural intervention, their minds and bodies are switched, and the result is a touching and hilarious coming-of-age comedy as they attempt to survive the pressures of junior high school life.

Mitamura Yuka is a normal, shy high school student. Except for the fact that she has psychic powers. When a new student with similar powers begins to show her skills, creating a force of psychic Nazi student enforcers, Yuka and her friends vow to stop her. But behind it all is a mysterious force that will put Yuka's powers to the ultimate test!

Obayashi's take on the famous Kosuke Kindaichi series, made popular partly thanks to the numerous movie-adaptions by Kon Ichikawa, the most known being The Inugami Family. Kosuke Kindaichi is the most famous detective in Japan. Kindaichi gets a new case to figure out who has beheaded a valuable statue and made off with its head.

Kyoko met Tetsu during her trip to San Francisco. Soon they fell in love but getting married was not in his mind. They were to meet again back in Tokyo but Tetsu didn't turn up. She went to look for him in San Francisco but all she found was him with his new girlfriend. Kyoko went back to Tokyo and eventually married a big corporate CEO.

Komori Chiaki is a budding tennis student. However, one day while training, her coach hits a ball into her eye on accident. At the hospital, the news that she will never regain the sight in her eye leaves her heartbroken. As a last resort, she undergoes a costly surgery from the mysterious doctor known as Black Jack, where after a successful operation, a mysterious figure starts to emerge in her vision, and only she can see it.

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.

A short film by Obayashi Nobuhiko made while making a commercial for Hitachi.

A short film by Obayashi Nobuhiko of people gathering by a beautiful lake in Canada.

A short film by Obayashi Nobuhiko of a collection of photos by Shinoyama Kishin of the Rio Carnival.

A short film by Obayashi Nobuhiko.

A promotional movie that was shown to Kirin Brewery factory visitors at the time. Japanese history and family memories intertwine with a musical interlude that introduces song-by-song the industrial brewing process by a cute "Beer Spirit".

This is a work of Nobuhiko Obayashi when he was around 30 years old. This semi-documentary from the perspective of a young designer visiting Japan from Northern Europe tells the story of the filmmaker Nobuhiko Obayashi and his friends who the young designer encounters in Japan.

A filmmaker recalls his youth in the town of Onomichi. In the present, he shoots a film in Onomichi alongside his cast, crew and family.

A program of five films on love and sex from the Japanese underground of the experimental cinema, assembled by avant-garde cineaste Takahiko Iimura, and shown at the American Cinematheque from January 19 to 25, 1967.

Experimental short film depicting the life, perhaps real, perhaps a dream, of a young girl named Emi. Emi travels to the city where she encounters her counterpart, Sari, and falls in love with…a vampire?

Nobuhiko Obayashi's short experimental film shows off persistence in film editing in the early 60s.

A meditation on eating people and quiet waitresses.

A non-narrative tribute to the seaside town of Onomichi, where Obayashi grew up and where most of these films were made.

A woman and boy visit an ominous graveyard.

An experimental film edited from footage of the Japanese countryside.

An Obayashi film made with Takabayashi Yoichi.

A young couple go on a picnic in the forest, where the woman reveals that she is pregnant.

A short scene of a mother and her little son playing ball games on a set of steps together.

Obayashi 8mm short about a man who reminisces about a girl in his past (played by Obayashi's soon-to-be wife Kyoko).

A short visualization of a poem by Fukunaga Takehiko.

A puppet animation Obayashi made while he was a teenager.

An animated film Obayashi made while still a child.

An animated short Obayashi made while still a child.