Yutaka Aoki

In the throes of an existential crisis, an aging director decides to travel to Japan to film the tour of his son's rock-band, PEROPERO. His partner Emma acts as producer as they follow the band's performances in a string of live clubs across Japan. When the director falls hard for the young Japanese tour manager, both the film shoot and his life threaten to fall apart.

Fired from his part-time job in a restaurant kitchen for absenteeism, rookie boxer Tamura has a lot to be angry and frustrated about in his life. But things start to change when he’s approached at the gym by the artist Hattori, who wants to use him as the new model for the manga character Yellow Kid. Yellow Kid first appeared in an American comic in the late 19th century, and Hattori revived him as an older character a century later.

Working for a textbook publisher, Seiji has lived in Tokyo since his mother moved them there after getting divorced during his childhood while his father remained in the countryside. To open up a new market in the Tohoku area, Seiji goes back to his hometown and meets his father for the first time in 30 years. They start living together with hard feelings and bitterness; however, an encounter with the neighborhood kids makes Seiji open his heart bit by bit, even to his old man. One day Seiji hears about the "Once around the Star Tour" at the elementary school where he is visiting on business. This brings the father and the son close together and draws them back to one memory...

While the wedding day should be blissful for the bride, Eiko, there is a secret that she can’t tell her fiance...

In the Meiji Period, in the 19th century Japan, transitioning towards modernization, BLACK OX explores the relationship between man and ox, inspired by the “Ten Ox-Herding Pictures” a series of short poems and illustrations from Zen Buddhism tradition that depict the path to enlightenment and spiritual awakening. BLACK OX follows the life of a Man, a former hunter-gatherer who loses his connection to the gods of nature and to his spirituality in the process of becoming a farmer and becoming “Japanese” during the nation’s period of westernization in the Meiji Period. Transitioning from a life in the mountains to a life in the farm, one day he comes across a Black Ox. He somehow succeeds in leading the reluctant animal back to his home, and begins living with it. The OX becomes his companion in a life of seasons in the attempt to reconnect with nature.