In the 1990s the WOWOW satellite station financed a series of films under the banner J Movie Wars. With producer Takenori Sento at the helm, J Movies Wars became a fertile breeding ground for young directing talent, including Naomi Kawase, who won the Cannes Camera d'Or prize in 1997 for her debut feature "Moe no Suzaku" (Suzaku) — and was briefly married to producer Sento.

The BS-i satellite channel is now trying something similar with its Japanese Break Through Films series. But instead of focusing primarily on auteurs, as was Sento's inclination, the series' producers are nurturing a wider range of talent, including scriptwriters and stars. Also, while Sento took laser aim at prestigious festival prizes with arty minimalist pics, the Japanese Break Through folks are trying to please audiences, as well as festival programmers, with films in popular genres, such as horror and seishun eiga (teen drama).

Veteran director Ryuichi Hiroki has made two films for the series, both with the main title "Koi Suru Nichiyobi (Love On Sunday)," also used by a BS-i drama series that ran from 2003 to 2005. Both films have a handheld-shot, unrehearsed feel, as though Hiroki is not so much staging a drama as capturing his characters on the fly. His situations — a heart-wrenching goodbye to a hometown in the first film, a troubled final reunion in the second — are seishun eiga standards, but he strips them of genre cliches. Also, his big emotions — from stormy fights to teary confessions — emerge directly from his character's inner cores, not the more usual plot points.