Directing

Akira Kurosawa

Born March 23, 1910 · Shinagawa, Tokyo Prefecture, Japan

Died September 6, 1998 · aged 88

Akira Kurosawa (黒澤明) was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He displayed a bold, dynamic style, strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it; he was involved with all aspects of film production. Kurosawa entered the Ja…

Known For

The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven · 2016

The Magnificent Seven

MovieAdventureAction

Looking to mine for gold, greedy industrialist Bartholomew Bogue seizes control of the Old West town of Rose Creek. With their lives in jeopardy, Emma Cullen and other desperate residents turn to bounty hunter Sam Chisolm for help. Chisolm recruits an eclectic group of gunslingers to take on Bogue and his ruthless henchmen. With a deadly showdown on the horizon, the seven mercenaries soon find themselves fighting for more than just money once the bullets start to fly.

Seven Samurai

Seven Samurai · 1954

MovieActionDrama

A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.

The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven · 1960

The Magnificent Seven

MovieWesternAction

An oppressed Mexican peasant village hires seven gunfighters to help defend their homes.

A Fistful of Dollars

A Fistful of Dollars · 1964

A Fistful of Dollars

The Man With No Name enters the Mexican village of San Miguel in the midst of a power struggle among the three Rojo brothers and sheriff John Baxter. When a regiment of Mexican soldiers bearing gold intended to pay for new weapons is waylaid by the Rojo brothers, the stranger inserts himself into the middle of the long-simmering battle, selling false information to both sides for his own benefit.

Highest 2 Lowest

Highest 2 Lowest · 2025

Highest 2 Lowest

MovieThrillerCrime

When a titan music mogul, widely known as having the "best ears in the business", is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.

Rashomon

Rashomon · 1950

MovieCrimeDrama

Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.

Ran

MovieActionDrama

Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.

High and Low

High and Low · 1963

MovieDramaCrime

A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.

Filmography

Sort

The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven · 2016

The Magnificent Seven

MovieAdventureAction

Looking to mine for gold, greedy industrialist Bartholomew Bogue seizes control of the Old West town of Rose Creek. With their lives in jeopardy, Emma Cullen and other desperate residents turn to bounty hunter Sam Chisolm for help. Chisolm recruits an eclectic group of gunslingers to take on Bogue and his ruthless henchmen. With a deadly showdown on the horizon, the seven mercenaries soon find themselves fighting for more than just money once the bullets start to fly.

Original Film Writer

Seven Samurai

Seven Samurai · 1954

MovieActionDrama

A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.

Director

The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven · 1960

The Magnificent Seven

MovieWesternAction

An oppressed Mexican peasant village hires seven gunfighters to help defend their homes.

Original Film Writer

A Fistful of Dollars

A Fistful of Dollars · 1964

A Fistful of Dollars

The Man With No Name enters the Mexican village of San Miguel in the midst of a power struggle among the three Rojo brothers and sheriff John Baxter. When a regiment of Mexican soldiers bearing gold intended to pay for new weapons is waylaid by the Rojo brothers, the stranger inserts himself into the middle of the long-simmering battle, selling false information to both sides for his own benefit.

Original Story

Highest 2 Lowest

Highest 2 Lowest · 2025

Highest 2 Lowest

MovieThrillerCrime

When a titan music mogul, widely known as having the "best ears in the business", is targeted with a ransom plot, he is jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.

Original Film Writer

Rashomon

Rashomon · 1950

MovieCrimeDrama

Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.

Director

Ran

MovieActionDrama

Shakespeare's King Lear is reimagined as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan where an aging warlord divides his kingdom between his three sons.

Director

High and Low

High and Low · 1963

MovieDramaCrime

A Yokohama shoe executive faces a wrenching choice when kidnappers mistakenly seize his chauffeur’s son but demand the ransom anyway.

Director

Ikiru

Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.

Director

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai · 1999

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai

MovieCrimeDrama

A Black hitman who models after the samurai of old finds himself targeted for death by the mob.

Thanks

Yojimbo

Yojimbo · 1961

MovieDramaThriller

A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.

Director

Last Man Standing

Last Man Standing · 1996

Last Man Standing

MovieActionCrime

John Smith is a mysterious stranger who is drawn into a vicious war between two Prohibition-era gangs. In a dangerous game, he switches allegiances from one to another, offering his services to the highest bidder. As the death toll mounts, Smith takes the law into his own hands in a deadly race to stay alive.

Original Film Writer

Living

London, 1953. Mr. Williams, a veteran civil servant, is an important cog within the city's bureaucracy as it struggles to rebuild in the aftermath of World War II. Buried under paperwork at the office and lonely at home, his life has long felt empty and meaningless. Then a devastating medical diagnosis forces him to take stock, and to try and grasp some fulfilment before it passes permanently beyond reach.

Original Film Writer

Throne of Blood

Throne of Blood · 1957

Throne of Blood

MovieDramaHistory

Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.

Director

Dreams

MovieFantasyDrama

Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature.

Director

Kagemusha

Kagemusha · 1980

MovieActionDrama

Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. When Shingen dies, his generals reluctantly agree to have the impostor take over as the powerful ruler. He soon begins to appreciate life as Shingen, but his commitment to the role is tested when he must lead his troops into battle against the forces of a rival warlord.

Director

Sanjuro

Sanjuro · 1962

MovieDramaAction

In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a proper samurai on its ear.

Director

Runaway Train

Runaway Train · 1985

MovieActionThriller

A hardened convict and a younger prisoner escape from a brutal prison in the middle of winter only to find themselves on an out-of-control train with a female railway worker while being pursued by the vengeful head of security.

Original Film Writer

The Hidden Fortress

The Hidden Fortress · 1958

The Hidden Fortress

MovieDramaAction

In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.

Director

Battle Beyond the Stars

Battle Beyond the Stars · 1980

Battle Beyond the Stars

MovieScience FictionAction

A young farmer assembles a band of diverse mercenaries to defend his peaceful planet from an evil tyrant.

Original Story

The Magnificent Seven Ride!

The Magnificent Seven Ride! · 1972

The Magnificent Seven Ride!

MovieWesternAction

Marshal Chris Adams turns down a friend's request to help stop the depredations of a gang of Mexican bandits. When his wife is killed by bank robbers and his friend is killed capturing the last thief, Chris feels obligated to take up his friend's cause and recruits a writer and five prisoners to destroy the desperadoes.

Original Concept

Red Beard

Red Beard · 1965

Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.

Director

Dersu Uzala

Dersu Uzala · 1975

MovieAdventureDrama

A military explorer meets and befriends a Goldi man in Russia’s unmapped forests. A deep and abiding bond evolves between the two men, one civilized in the usual sense, the other at home in the glacial Siberian woods.

Director

Return of the Seven

Return of the Seven · 1966

Return of the Seven

MovieWesternAction

Chico, one of the remaining members of The Magnificent Seven, now lives in the town that they (The Seven) helped. One day someone comes and takes most of the men prisoner. His wife seeks out Chris, the leader of The Seven for help. Chris also meets Vin another member of The Seven. They find four other men and they go to help Chico.

Original Concept

Samurai 7

Samurai 7 · 2004

SeriesAction & AdventureAnimation

As villages perish under the thumb of a cruel race of warriors, a young priestess named Kirara travels the countryside gathering stray samurais.

Original Concept

Kaze no Yojimbo

Kaze no Yojimbo · 2001

Kaze no Yojimbo

SeriesDramaAnimation

George Kodama is investigating an incident that occurred in the small town of Kimujuku over 15 years ago. George is soon caught up in the middle of a bloody gang fight for control of the town.

Original Film Writer