Ryūsuke Hamaguchi

Ryūsuke Hamaguchi is the most prestigious Japanese director and screenwriter to have emerged in recent years, notorious for his stripped-down realism that meticulously portrays the turmoil of feelings. Born in 1978, he studied Aesthetics and Cinema in Tokyo and attracted the attention of his home country with his graduation film, Passion (2008). His work portrays the strangeness and intimacy of human relationships, often exploring the theme of loneliness. In 2021, Hamaguchi won the Grand Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival for his Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) and, that same year, Drive My Car (2021) was hailed as one of the best films of the decade, winning numerous awards since its premiere at Cannes, including the Best Screenplay Award at that festival and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. That same year, LEFFEST organised a retrospective dedicated to the filmmaker's work. In 2023, Hamaguchi again won the Grand Jury Prize in Berlin with his latest film, Evil Does Not Exist.