Ugetsu Monogatari

The world’s troubles recede, at least for a moment, in this intimate drama about an affair between a Finnish man and a Syrian immigrant.

A chance encounter reconnects two men in this heart-breaking lament on love, lust and missed opportunities.

Following a family of criminals who must clean up their act, Gold Coast Lounge puts a twist on the classic 1940s noir.

Karel Zeman's astonishing fantasy mixes live-action and animation to tell the adventures of a ploughman and a mercenery during the Thirty Years War.

The living and the dead coexist in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cannes-winning meditation on love and loss.

The debut film of Nobuhiko Obayashi (House/Hausu) is a wistful experimental short in which his formal dexterity is already evident.

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

This stunningly beautiful anthology of Japanese ghost stories is one of the most meticulously crafted supernatural films ever made.

A single mother desperately tries to shield her daughter from hidden terrors in her apartment block, in Hideo Nakata's chilling masterpiece.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's dark and apocalyptic J-Horror foretells how technology serves to isolate us as it grows more important to our lives.

A journalist sets out to uncover in urban legend about a supposedly cursed videotape, in Hideo Nakata's chilling and highly influential tale of technological terror.

Before The Hunger Games there was Battle Royale, Kinji Fukasaku's magnificently twisted shocker in which tearaway teens are given three days to kill or be killed.

Mikio Naruse’s best-known film is a masterful study of Ginza hostess struggling under constant pressures to compromise her honour.

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

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

Mizoguchi’s historical epic is among the greatest of all Japanese films, and a masterpiece of humanist cinema.

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.

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

Chikako (Yoshiko Okada) works hard to pay her brothers Ryoichi’s (Ureo Egawa) college fees, but disaster looms when he learns the true nature of her work.

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.

A seemingly ordinary typist moonlights as a fun-loving gangster's moll in one of Ozu's most enduring silent films.

Mizoguchi’s historical epic is among the greatest of all Japanese films, and a masterpiece of humanist cinema.

Family secrets echo around a Spanish clan, ringing loud enough to rouse the dead, in Pedro Almodóvar's assured melodrama.

The world’s troubles recede, at least for a moment, in this intimate drama about an affair between a Finnish man and a Syrian immigrant.

Daniel Auteuil’s illustrator is given the chance to visit a different era to re-evaluate his life in this resplendent and absurdly enjoyable French comedy.

A fourteen-year-old girl falls for another of her polygamous husband's wives in this award-winning coming-of-age tale of love and self-discovery.

A traditional rite of passage ritual forms the backdrop for this tough and complex tale of closeted sexuality in South Africa.

A chance encounter reconnects two men in this heart-breaking lament on love, lust and missed opportunities.