Takeshi Kitano

Takeshi Kitano is an international icon. We know the actor, the multi-award-winning filmmaker, but many ignore his double personality: the crazy TV star, the street kid from Tokyo close to the Yakuza, and the political satirist who blasted taboos! Can we dream of a better guide to introduce us to the cultural history of Japan?

A seemingly unremarkable man called “Mouse” is caught by the police. In exchange for his freedom, he goes undercover, infiltrates a drug ring, and arranges a fake deal, but an unexpected turn of events occurs.

Lord Oda Nobunaga plans to control Japan where rival warlords battle by waging war against several clans. His vassal Araki Murashige stages a rebellion and promptly disappears.

The shocking story of Aum Shinrikyo, the doomsday cult that unleashed a deadly nerve gas in Tokyo’s subway system in 1995. Founded by disillusioned yoga teacher Shoko Asahara, Aum transformed into a terrorist organization while Japan’s police and media turned a blind eye. Featuring rare archival footage and an interview with one of Asahara’s former high-ranking disciples. A Sundance premiere.

In the near future, Major is the first of her kind: a human saved from a terrible crash, then cyber-enhanced to be a perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world's most dangerous criminals.

When a tough yakuza gangster is betrayed by his bosses, it means all out war. Bodies pile up as he takes out everyone in his way to the top in a brutal quest for revenge.

As the police launch a full-scale crackdown on organized crime, it ignites a national yakuza struggle between the Sanno of the East and Hanabishi of the West. What started as an internal strife in Outrage has now become a nationwide war in Outrage Beyond.

Five years after the all-out war between the Sanno and Hanabishi crime families, former yakuza boss Otomo works in South Korea for Mr. Chang, a noted fixer. When tensions rise between Chang and the Hanabishi, and Chang's life is endangered, Otomo returns to Japan to settle things once and for all.

A nostalgic look at the birth and death of arthouse film distribution in Russia in the early 2000s. The story of the company Cinema Without Borders and its two founders, Sam Klebanov and Anton Mazurov.

Ryuzo and his 7 former henchmen are all retired yakuza, but they now live as regular old men. One day, Ryuzo becomes the victim of a phishing fraud. He calls his 7 men together to reform their society.

In the sixties, Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) built a house on the remote island of Fårö, located in the Baltic Sea, and left Stockholm to live there. When he died, the house was preserved. A group of very special film buffs, came from all over the world, travel to Fårö in search of the genius and his legacy. (An abridged version of Bergman's Video, 2012.)

Kojiro Himuro is a champion figure skater taking part in an upcoming world competition. Yet, he is suffering from a complicated CTEPH (chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension). Kantaro Kurosu is the director of the Cross Medical Center. He asks Michiko Daimon to perform surgery on Kojiro, but, right before his surgery, she is deprived of “the most important weapon as a surgeon.”

A legendary entertainer and a pioneer of gay activism, Miwa was born Akihiro Maruyama. As a young singer, Miwa popularized androgyny as a fashion statement, fusing the masculine and the feminine into a signal of a new generation of aesthetics. This evolved into performing as a woman and living off-stage as a man. With glitter, wit, evening gowns, and enchanting storytelling, Miwa looks back over a 50-year career and a fascinating life in music, film, and television.

A 30 years odyssey: the world's most intriguing artists and thinkers from the fields of visual art, music, filmmaking, acting, literature, philosophy, politics, business and science, are asked the same question: "Why are you creative?"

Kenji and Aya spend their summer days in a Hotel. While she is doing her own thing, he tries to work on his novel. But then a few strange hotel guest arouse the curiosity of the couple.

Yuma Nakahara is the CEO of an IT company and he is a workaholic. He is focused only on expanding his company. He receives a phone call from his former co-worker and friend Kouhei, but Kouhei doesn't say anything. Yuma gets the sense that something is wrong and heads to Kouhei's hometown of Shinminato, Toyama Prefecture, Japan. In Shinminato, Yuma meets other people and becomes involved in the Shinminato Hikiyama Festival. His outlook on life begins to change.

One of the hottest selling tickets in town is to see the hugely popular rakugoka, or comic storyteller, Danshun. Danshun himself was inspired as a little boy to become a rakugoka after seeing the legendary Danshi.

The posthumous wish of Eiji's wife is for her ashes to be scattered in the ocean near her hometown. Eiji also learns that his wife letter for him at the post office before she died.

Lone wolf detective with an enormous personal grievance seeks to connect the mysterious death of his daughter to an urban legend of a villain who terrorizes Japan by insinuating himself into people's dreams and the collective psyche of the Japanese people.

One late night in June 1942, Sakuma Seitaro dangles from the frame of a skylight in an isolation cell in Akita Prison. He forces open the glass window and breaks out of jail. This crime even reaches the ears of Urata Susumu, the chief warden of Kosuge Prison in Tokyo. Urata had been in charge of those sentenced to life in the prison until last year. Although Sakuma is a dangerous person who had also broken out of jail in Aomori, he submits to Urata who is the only person who had treated him kindly in the past. However, three months after escaping from jail, Sakuma shows up at Urata’s house. He has come to complain about the inhumane Akita prison officers. But he is locked up again after Urata notifies the police during an unguarded moment. A year later, Sakuma is sent to Abashiri Prison and Urata is also ordered to transfer as the prison’s chief warden.

In 1959, a body of a flight attendant of an international airline is found, strangled. Detective Rokuro Fujisawa takes charge of the investigation with a young detective Ichimura and his investigations lead him to Father Tolbeck as a suspect. But the police are forced to move very discreetly as the time was right after the Second World War, when a sensitive situation that involves Western people and religion is likely to become an international issue. The investigation leads to an unexpected discloser of a shadowy business behind the church that reflects the uncertainty of the time.

An unscheduled late night train arrives at Tokyo station on 15 August, the anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. Boarding the train are spirits of great men who died honourable deaths in the war more than 60 years ago. They have come to the modern world to see their homeland as a peaceful country and to tell the lingering spirits of the war dead about the current conditions.

At the 60th anniversary of Cannes Film Festival, 34 famous directors are followed by camera.

In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act.

A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.

Blind traveler Zatoichi is a master swordsman and a masseur with a fondness for gambling on dice games. When he arrives in a village torn apart by warring gangs, he sets out to protect the townspeople.

It's three years after the events of the original Battle Royale, and Shuya Nanahara is now an internationally-known terrorist determined to bring down the government. His terrorist group, Wild Seven, stages an attack that levels several buildings in Tokyo on Christmas Day, killing 8000 people. In order for the government to study the benefits of "teamwork", the new students work in pairs, with their collars electronically linked so that if one of them is killed, the other dies as well. They must kill Nanahara in three days - or die.

In 1923, teenager Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island, in South Korea, to Osaka, in Japan. Along the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of kamaboko, processed seafood products, in his poor Korean-Japanese community exploiting his employees.

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

Beat Takeshi lives the busy and sometimes surreal life of a showbiz celebrity. One day he meets his blond lookalike named Kitano, a shy convenience store cashier, who, still an unknown actor, is waiting for his big break. After their paths cross, Kitano seems to begin hallucinating about becoming Beat.

Izo is an assassin in the service of a Tosa lord and Imperial supporter. After killing dozens of the Shogun's men, Izo is captured and crucified. Instead of being extinguished, his rage propels him through the space-time continuum to present-day Tokyo. Here Izo transforms himself into a new, improved killing machine.

Takeshi Kitano plays a version of himself in which he's a struggling director cycling through a number of different genres in an effort to complete his latest project.

Machisu is a painter. He never had the success he thinks he is entitled to. Regardless of this, he always remains trying to be successful. His wife Sachiko keeps supporting him, despite all setbacks.

A look at the life and work of Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki and his impact on Japanese culture.

The drama stars Beat Takeshi as General Hideki Tojo, who served as Prime Minister of Japan during World War II and was later executed as a war criminal. The story's theme is said to be a look at how the Pacific War began, focusing mostly on the three month period between the Imperial Conference (Gozen Kaigi) on September 6, 1941, and the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Made-for-TV film adaptation of the 1957 novel by Seicho Matsumoto starring Takeshi Kitano and directed by Noboru Tanaka. The novel was previously adapted in 1978 film entitled “The Demon” starring Ken Ogata and directed by Yoshitaro Nomura. After a married man stops providing for his mistress, she abandons their three young children with him and his wrathful wife. Consumed by the jealousy and power struggles of their own relationships, they involve the children in their own games - with tragic results.

Brash, loudmouthed and opportunistic, Kikujiro is the unlikely companion for Masao who is determined to see the mother he has never met. The two begin a series of adventures which soon turns out to be a whimsical journey of laughter and tears with a wide array of surprises and unique characters along the way.

In a dystopian 2021, Johnny is a data trafficker who has an implant that allows him to securely store data too sensitive for regular computer networks. On one delivery run, he accepts a package that not only exceeds the implant's safety limits—and will kill him if the data is not removed in time—but also contains information far more important and valuable than he had ever imagined. On a race against time, he must avoid the assassins sent to kill him and remove the data before it, too, ends his life.

Beleaguered police detective Nishi takes desperate measures to try and set things right in a world gone wrong. With those close to him suffering their own tribulations, Nishi's methods become increasingly extreme.

Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering on a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano. The school's stern master can choose to intervene, or to let Kano decide his own path.

Murakawa, an aging Tokyo yakuza tiring of gangster life, is sent by his boss to Okinawa along with a few of his henchmen to help end a gang war, supposedly as mediators between two warring clans. He finds that the dispute between the clans is insignificant and whilst wondering why he was sent to Okinawa at all, his group is attacked in an ambush. The survivors flee and make a decision to lay low at the beach while they await further instructions.

Five men plot to steal a large sum of money from the local yakuza, but everything does not go as planned and the men find themselves hunted down by contract killers.

Masaki, a baseball player and gas-station attendant, gets into trouble with the local Yakuza and goes to Okinawa to get a gun to defend himself. There he meets Uehara, a tough gangster, who is in serious debt to the yakuza and planning revenge.

While pursuing his dream of having car sex, a goofy middle-aged man makes all the wrong moves and ends up enrolling in a number of crazy escapades.

A low-key private detective agency in Paris is run by Rie and her partner Kishin, two ex-pats who tick along between cases by giving guided tours of the city to busloads of Japanese tourists.

A young man named Kazuo Takayama runs across a religious group whose founder cures an old woman in a wheelchair, restoring her power to walk by a simple touch. Kazuo grows more interested in this new religion and tries to get more followers.

A story about the development of a bright and strong yakuza. Otaki is an old-fashioned respectful yakuza who tries to protect his small yakuza family. When his boss gets shot, he decides to go after the plotters.

The police are tracking a man who shoots at people. But the young sister of a detective finds that he's not the mad vigilante portrayed in newspapers.

An old man falls into a coma and dreams about his childhood during WWII.

Island of Java, 1942, during World War II. British Major Jack Celliers arrives at a Japanese prison camp, run by the strict Captain Yonoi. Colonel John Lawrence, who has a profound knowledge of Japanese culture, and Sergeant Hara, brutal and simpleton, will witness the struggle of wills between two men from very different backgrounds who are tragically destined to clash.

A detective breaks all rules of ethical conduct while investigating a colleague’s involvement in drug pushing and yakuza activities.

The widow of a murdered yakuza boss serves jail time for attacking the man she believes killed her husband. After her release, as she is shadowed by a hitman, she returns to thoughts of revenge.

A lower-middle-class policeman lives decadently, chasing cheap beer and girls at the same time he's running from loan sharks and his personal expectations.

A series of interconnected vignettes regarding Makoto Sawada, an energetic yet socially inept kindergartner, and his long-suffering family. Makoto strives to receive the title of his school's "Best Child" award, resulting in chaos and misunderstandings wherever he goes.

A story about a woman who is a research student of a theater company and the three men who are at the mercy of her.

Stuck doing show-biz schlock, an investigative reporter stumbles on a scheme to swindle pensions through an attractive gold futures scam, a potential news-story.

Documentary about the eclectic Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto during the recording sessions for his 1984 album "Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia".

Shuji was once a feared member of the Yakuza crime syndicate, but he's reformed his ways, abandoned his old life and left the city for a small coastal fishing town where he's become an honest fisherman.

Two high school girls get mixed up in murder while investigating the disappearance of a classmate.

Go, Go, Second Time Virgin is the story of two damned and abused teenagers who meet and fall in mutant love on a Tokyo rooftop. Their only hope is to cement their love with an escape into oblivion.