Japanese Cinema

Koreeda's lyrical fantasy challenges the viewer to reflect on the experiences that most make life worth living.

Credited with bringing Japanese cinema to worldwide audiences, Akira Kurosawa’s breakthrough tells the story of a murder in the woods from four differing perspectives.

Not all is as it seems in Hirokazu Koreeda’s powerful drama told from shifting perspectives.

A bureaucrat’s life finds new meaning in Kurosawa’s classic original, the source for Bill Nighy’s brilliant drama, Living.

The first film made by Akira Kurosawa's own production company is a dark tale of greed, corporate corruption and revenge.

Yasujiro Ozu's cheerful comedy about the silliness of everyday chatter.

Hiroshi Teshigahara's mystifying, serene and provocative fable about an entomologist who becomes trapped in a young widow’s desert shack.

In this bizarre erotic family drama, a young widow pretends to be a cow for her senile father-in-law, who's a farmer.

Koreeda’s subtle, moving account of the tensions within a family is his most Ozu-like film.

A master of period-drama, Kurosawa (Rashomon, Seven Samurai) recasts Macbeth as a Japanese warlord in one of the greatest Shakespearean adaptations

Takashi Miike burst to prominence with this disturbing tale of a deadly young woman who turns the tables on her middle-aged suitor.

Farmers hire a band of samurai to defend them against marauding bandits in Kurosawa’s influential epic, a touchstone for action movies ever since.

Koreeda’s drama about four children left to fend for themselves is a heartbreaking study of childhood neglect.

Shoji (Ryu Ikebe) and his wife Masako (Chikage Awashima), struggle with a family tragedy. When Shoji's interest turns to the office flirt, the couple's fragile peace is threatened.

Yasujiro Ozu's influential masterpiece is a tender meditation on family politics, sacrifice and the status quo.

Mamoru Oshii's beautifully animated and disturbingly prophetic anime classic about the hunt for a supreme hacker in a transhumanist dystopia.

Kurosawa’s classic about a drifting samurai who plays two gangs off against each other, famously remade as A Fistful of Dollars.

Koreeda’s first fiction feature is an exquisite meditation on loss, loneliness, uncertainty, and coming to terms with the past.

A fixture in critics' polls, Yasujirō Ozu's most enduring masterpiece is a beautifully nuanced exploration of filial duty, expectation and regret.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s follow-up to Drive My Car is a hauntingly enigmatic eco-thriller. Winner of Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival.

Part gangster film, part melodrama and part social critique, Akira Kurosawa's first critical success follows the troubled friendship between a disillusioned doctor and a young yakuza.

Yasujiro Ozu's elegiac final film charts the inevitable eclipse of older generations by irreverent youth.

Kurosawa’s episodic, poignant story of a 19th-century doctor (Toshiro Mifune) working in a clinic for the poor and his tumultuous friendship with a young intern.

Mikio Naruse’s masterpiece about a wandering woman trying to find her identity amid the devastation of post-war Japan.

Kurosawa’s assured debut film about a young man’s spiritual journey through the study and practice of judo.

Akira Kurosawa’s procedural crime masterpiece follows an industrialist who faces an agonising choice.

Ozu's deft comedy takes an ironic look at the decline of paternal authority.

Akira Kurosawa’s thrilling mix of fairy story and samurai movie - a story of rival clans, hidden gold and a princess in distress - was famously a key inspiration for George Lucas’ Star Wars.

Akira Kurosawa’s masterful mix of film noir and police thriller set on the sweltering mean streets of occupied Tokyo.