Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Director · Writer · Cast

Born

July 19, 1955 · Kobe, Japan

“It is the things that we can’t see that create this deep fear within the audience, and within people generally, because even if we can’t see, we can imagine them. I think that this is something which is very important for movies, to work with these kinds of techniques and fears.” Director and screenwriter graduated from the Faculty of Sociology at Rikkyo University. He began filming as a student with an 8mm camera and in 1980 won his first award at the PIA Film Festival. After graduating he worked in the exploitation film industry, known as pinku eiga, where marginality is explored and eroticism is emphasized. In 1992 he won a scholarship from the Sundance Institute for the screenplay of Charisma, which allowed him to study directing in the United States. After returning to Japan, he made a series of television films where he began to explore what would become his authorial style, characterized by the treatment of the sinister, loneliness and individualism. He gained international recognition thanks to Cure, selected at the Rotterdam and Toronto International Film Festivals, among the best known. The world now knew his particular work of film genres, the enveloping and overwhelming atmospheres and the feeling of unknown uneasiness, with good reason in the United States they called him "Godfather of J-Horror".