Early Spring

Toshio Matsumoto's kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most intoxicating films of the 60s.

A passionate writer of film versions for the visually impaired meets an older photographer who is slowly losing his eyesight, in this luminous love story from Naomi Kawase (Sweet Bean).

Voted the best Czech film ever made, František Vláčil’s groundbreaking 13th-century epic is a story of a fierce inter-clan rivalry and doomed love.

Vojtěch Jasný’s enduring masterpiece chronicles the saga of Czech villagers forced into collective farms by their new Communist rulers.

Warmly nostalgic look at small-town life from Oscar®-winning director Jiří Menzel (Closely Observed Trains).

Visually stunning recreation of the longest siege in history, and its horrific effects on the inhabitants of Leningrad, during the Second World War.

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

Akira Kurosawa’s visually spectacular epic transplants Shakespeare’s King Lear from Celtic Britain to feudal Japan.

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.

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

Comedy turns to pathos in Yasujiro Ozu's tale of a group of businessmen who conspire to match-make for a widow and her daughter.

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

Ozu's wonderfully poised ensemble work presents the intricacies and contradictions of three generations who have lived through the end of an era and are looking towards the new.

Ozu’s long-term collaborator Kogo Noda scripts a subtle shift from light to dark as Hirano’s carefree college life is marred by tragedy.

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

The surviving, incomplete version of Ozu's moving silent drama about a young man struggling to deal with a disturbing family secret.

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

In a Japan recently devastated by World War II a devoted, near-destitute mother turns to prostitution to pay medical bills when her son falls dangerously ill.

Takahashi finds a creative way to avoid doing his revision in Ozu's roguish comedy, reminiscent of Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman.

Toshio Matsumoto's kaleidoscopic masterpiece is one of the most intoxicating films of the 60s.

A passionate writer of film versions for the visually impaired meets an older photographer who is slowly losing his eyesight, in this luminous love story from Naomi Kawase (Sweet Bean).

Voted the best Czech film ever made, František Vláčil’s groundbreaking 13th-century epic is a story of a fierce inter-clan rivalry and doomed love.

Vojtěch Jasný’s enduring masterpiece chronicles the saga of Czech villagers forced into collective farms by their new Communist rulers.

Warmly nostalgic look at small-town life from Oscar®-winning director Jiří Menzel (Closely Observed Trains).

Charmingly idiosyncratic comedy reworking of Cyrano de Bergerac, with Alex Lawther as a boarder who helps the school hero woo a French teacher's daughter despite being besotted with her himself.