Naomi Kawase follows up Still The Water with this sweet ode to the simple joys in life. Masatoshi Nagase (co-star of Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train) stars as Sentaro, the tactiturn manager of a small shop that sells dorayaki, a mouth-watering Japanese dessert consisting of sweet bean paste sandwiched between two pancakes.

When a blissful elderly woman (Kirin Kiki) with mysteriously disfigured hands shows up at the shop looking for work, her delicious bean paste wins him over and he hires her, thus starting a relationship that is about much more than just street food as her difficult past slowly comes to light and alters Sentaro's own rather bleak outlook on life.

Beautifully shot and acted, Sweet Bean creates its ultimate sense of hope by confronting real heartbreak head-on with compassion - and ultimately challenges what it means to be Japanese in the modern era.

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