The Kobayashi Four

Cult director Masahiro Kobayashi helmed the four features in this package. It begins with the black comedy Bootleg Film (1998) - the gritty tale of a Japanese police officer and a yakuza gangster on a violent road trip. The second film in the package, 2001's Man Walking on Snow, ankles all humor and heads into purely dramatic territory, with the sad chronicle of an elderly man trying to sort out the details of his life in a dying small town. 2007's THE REBIRTH explores the emotional landscape of a friendship between the mother of a little girl who murdered a classmate, and the classmate's still-mourning father. Finally, 2005's Bashing tells of a humanitarian aid worker kidnapped while trying to aid Iraqi civilians - who eventually returns to Japan and finds that the local population has shunned her.