A defining voice in contemporary Japanese cinema, Kiyoshi Kurosawa is celebrated for his uncanny ability to uncover the eerie and the existential within the everyday. From psychological thrillers to metaphysical dramas, the director’s work blurs the boundaries between genre and art, exploring themes of memory, grief, and the invisible forces that shape human behaviour.
In this special spotlight, JFF 2025 presents Kurosawa’s three most recent films. Together, they reveal a filmmaker in full command of his craft, continuing to challenge form and audience expectations alike.
Brisbane
Palace Barracks | 9 November
Screening: 15:30 – 16:25
Event: 16:30 – 17:00
Kiki Fung
Kiki Fung is curator, film critic, and Programme Consultant for Hong Kong International Film Festival. She was former Head Programmer for Brisbane International Film Festival and Brisbane Asia Pacific Film Festival. She has guest-curated for the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane Festival, and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (Sydney), among others.
A distinctive voice in world cinema, and universally renowned for his unnerving psychological horrors and thrillers, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s cinema transcends genre conventions, and is punctuated with modern impulses. With Chime, a prime example of his best achievements, alongside other major works, this talk will discuss how his mise-en-scene and audio-visual language work to chill the spine and unsettle the mind, often from the unknown and the non-existent, and sometimes in the most familiar.
Canberra
Palace Electric | 16 November
Event: 16:30 –17:00
Screening: 17:00 – 17:55
Quentin Turnour
Quentin Turnour is a cinema programmer and historian, with a special interest in Japanese cinema history and Japanese-Australian screen connections. Programmer for the National Film and Sound Archive’s Arc Cinema between 2005 and 2014, he’s also been a consultant to the Melbourne Cinematheque, the Cinema Reborn Film Festival, Sydney Film Festival, past Canberra editions of the Japanese Film Festival, and National Film Archive of Japan, Tokyo. He is currently a Project Officer at the National Archives of Australia; this presentation will be given as an independent scholar.
A new trio of film festival, critical- and fan-servicing hits – Cloud, Chime, plus a sometimes scene-for-scene, French-relocation/remake of a late 1990s hit Serpent’s Path – suggest it’s time to unpack director Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s 40-year career journey. Programmer and historian Quentin Turnour looks at Kurosawa’s rise from 1980s slasher- and ‘pink’ straight-to-video movie journeyman, to 2020s acclaim as one of Japanese most esteemed, and thoughtful living film auteurs – and to no longer being confused with his namesake (but no relation), Akira Kurosawa.
Perth
Palace Raine Square | 23 November
Screening: 15:30 – 16:25
Event: 16:30 – 17:00
Tristan Fidler
Tristan Fidler is a writer and broadcaster, reviewing films for the Movie Squad segment and podcast on community radio station RTRFM 92.1. Tristan publishes the movie recommendations zine, VHS Tracking, and also programs and hosts the Trash Classics cult movie nights at Luna Cinemas.
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa works in multiple genres like crime, romance, and science fiction, but horror is where he achieved international success with Cure (1997) and Pulse (2001). This talk will consider how Kurosawa’s style connects to recurring themes, particularly depicting spaces of dread and uneasiness, and how that relates to economic and psychological anxieties.
Melbourne
The Kino | 30 November
Screening: 16:15 – 17:10
Event: 17:15 – 17:45
Spiro Economopoulos
Spiro Economopoulos is the Artistic Director of the Europa! Europa Film Festival and was previously the Program Director for the Melbourne Queer Film Festival. Recently, Spiro curated two seasons of Japanese horror for the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) that featured the films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, including Cure and Pulse.
Over his multi-decade career, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has seamlessly navigated between a wildly diverse genre of films. His body of work has flipped between Japanese ‘Pink Films’, low-budget V-Cinema (direct-to-video), yakuza films, supernatural horror and thrillers. In his most notable films, Pulse, Cure, and Cloud, Kurosawa has explored themes of social media malaise and how this omnipresent technology has isolated us rather than brought us together. Join film curator Spiro Economopoulos as he discusses Kurosawa’s films and how he uses genre to explore the ruptures within Japanese society.
Sydney
Palace Central | 30 November
Screening: 18:00 – 18:55
Event: 19:00 – 19:30
Dr Alec Morgan
Dr Alec Morgan is an honorary senior lecturer at Macquarie University, author and filmmaker. His recent feature documentary Ablaze won the Victorian Premier’s History Award.
Alec’s talk will explore the director’s career and his early experiments into the language of film that led to his employment of genre subversion and transgression, ambiguous protagonists, sound and silence, and contemporary social issues in his cinematic representation of modern Japanese characters.
The Japanese Film Festival Australia is brought to you by The Japan Foundation, Sydney.
© 2025 Japanese Film Festival
