When The Rain Stops

After moving to a new town with his mother, soft-spoken Kota has problems fitting in with the other kids at his middle school. One afternoon, he has a fight with his mother and storms out of the house to sit at the river – where he meets Rikako, a bubbly, popular girl from his class. An unlikely friendship evolves. It turns out Rikako is holding on to secrets about her own troubled home life as well, so they have more in common than they realized. But the troubles that brought them together also threaten to drive them apart. The film won the Runner-up Award at the 2019 PIA Film Festival.