Ryûsuke Hamaguchi is the most important Japanese director to emerge in recent years, a fan of a stripped-down realism that meticulously portrays the turmoil of feelings.
Hamaguchi was born in 1978, in Kanagawa. After completing training in Aesthetics at the University of Tokyo in March 2003, he worked as an assistant director in film and television for three years. In March 2008 he completed a Masters in Film at the Graduate School of Film and New Media at Tokyo University of the Arts. His graduation film Passion (2008) was well received by teachers, among them the renowned filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and was part of the Zabaltegi section of the San Sebastián Festival, as well as the competitive section of the Tokyo FILMeX Festival.
In 2010 he films the distortion of human relations through a strange love triangle in The Depths. Two years later, Intimacies appears, filmed as a graduation project for ENBU Seminar students. In Touching the Skin of Eeriness (2013) Hamaguchi presents us with an amazing study on loneliness.
In 2015 he surprises with Happy Hour – Happy Hour (distributed in Portugal by Leopardo Filmes), a film for which she won the Best Actress Award (for the ensemble of the film's actresses) and a Special Mention for Script at the Locarno Film Festival, where it was part of the Official Selection. It also received the Best Director Award at the Singapore Film Festival and the Best Screenplay Award at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
Asako I & II (2018), based on the novel Netemo Sametemo by Tomoka Shibasaki, was part of the Official Selection in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival.
In 2019 he was the subject of a full retrospective in Paris.
Hamaguchi's new film Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) is made up of three stories: an unexpected love triangle, a failed seduction trap, and an encounter that results from a misunderstanding – a delightful triptych about love in modern Japan , between the unpredictable and coincidences. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Festival, where it had its world premiere. Drive My Car (2021) is his most recent work, having been distinguished, at the Cannes Festival 2021, with the Ecumenical Jury prize, the Best Screenplay prize and also the FIPRESCI.