Kobayashi Masahiro
After a career as a folk singer and scenario writer, KOBAYASHI Masahiro (1954-2022, Japan) directed his feature debut Closing Time in 1996. He then set up the film production company Monkey Town Productions. His films have been screened in Cannes and other festivals and brought him international attention. The Rebirth (2007) won a Golden Leopard in Locarno. In 2008, his work was shown in a retrospective at the IFFR. Strangers When We Meet (2013) is Kobayashi’s contribution to the digital project of the Jeonju International Film Festival (South Korea).
Filmography
Closing Time (1996), Bootleg Film (1999), 1 shukan aiyoku nikki (2000), Koroshi/Film Noir (2000), Joshi shain aiyoku izonsho (2001), Aruku, hito/Man Walking on Snow (2001), Kanzen-naru shiiku: Onna rihatsushi no koi/Amazing Story (2003), Flic (2004), Bashing (2005), Eejanaika nippon miyagi hen kesennuma densetsu (2006), Shiawase/The Happiness (2006), Ai no yokan/The Rebirth (2007), Byakuya/A White Night (2009), Wakanarai/Where Are You? (2009), ‘Wakanarai’ no sekai (2010 doc), Haru tono tabi/Haru’s Journey (2010), Girigiri no onnatachi/Women on the Edge (2011), Nippon no higeki/Japan’s Tragedy (2012), Strangers When We Meet (2013)
Kobayashi Masahiro at IFFR
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Man Walking on Snow
A simple story about grand things. The old man who walks through the snow is on his way to a fish farm to look at fish and to fill the void. It wil
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Amazing Story
Again, Kobayashi takes us along to a snow-covered Hokkaido, where this time a man kidnaps the hairdresser of a small town. Not a thriller, but a li
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Bootleg Film
Road movie filled with film references set in a snow-covered Japan. With an unlikely friendship between a cop and a Yakuza, a body in the trunk and
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Closing Time
‘The most French of all Japanese film makers’ made his debut with this story about the seamy side of Tokyo. A down and out writer fills his nights
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Flic
When a young girl from Hokkaido is murdered in her hotel room in Tokyo with a chainsaw, Inspector Murata (the flic from the title) is brought back
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The Rebirth
Cold behaviour in a cold world doesn’t mean that a film about coldness should also be cold. Two people come to terms with a sorrow so great t
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Bashing
A Kobayashi in top form. Yuko is a young woman who worked as a volunteer for an aid organisation in Iraq. One fateful day she was kidnapped. ItR
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Japan’s Tragedy
Black-and-white, with rice-paper doors. The director knows his classics, but remains a modernist. A father and son wrestle with death and loss. Str
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Strangers When We Meet
A car accident and a secret date cause Ryoichi (Kobayashi himself) and his wife to stop talking to each other. Intensely sad.
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Lunatic
Dramatic story about the love-hate relationship between two brothers, that was started by an actress only just cured of her insanity.