Ugetsu Monogatari

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.

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

In this bizarre but bittersweet erotic comedy, a ventriloquist supplies the voice for his best friend when he begins dating a visually impaired girl. Daisuke Gotô

Campbell X's debut feature is a sexy, young and cool gay romance taking a unique look at a slice of British urban life.

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

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

Archive propels argument in this fascinating exploration of the social and cultural importance of Japan's film heritage.

Profiling one of the great directors of World Cinema, Wim Wenders delivers this moving portrait of Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu.

The on and off-screen character of Toshiro Mifune, Japan’s first international movie star, is explored in this illuminating documentary exploring the life and legacy of this mercurial icon.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Karel Zeman’s wildly inventive and comic take on the surreal adventures of the bragging Baron explodes on to the screen in a riot of colour, visual wit and poetic verve.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's a nerve-shredding thriller about the hunt for a serial killer in a bleak and decaying Tokyo.

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

A beautiful and contemplative portrait of grief from Cannes-winning filmmaker Naomi Kawase (Sweet Bean, Still the Water).

Kôji Fukada's mixture of slow-burn thriller and off-kilter family drama won Un Certain Regard Jury prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival.