Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘The Samurai and the Prisoner’ Courtesy of Janus Films Beloved specialty distributor Janus Films has acquired all U.S. rights to The Samurai and the Prisoner, the latest feature from influential Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa, which will soon make its world premiere at the 79th Cannes Film Festival. The deal was negotiated with Paris-based sales outfit Charades. Janus said it will announce theatrical release plans in the coming weeks.
Described by its producers as Kurosawa’s most ambitious feature to date, The Samurai and the Prisoner pairs veteran Japanese actor Masahiro Motoki — star of Departures, winner of the Oscar for best foreign-language feature in 2009 — with the prolific young star Masaki Suda, who earned widespread praise for his enigmatic performance in Kurosawa’s 2024 thriller Cloud. They are joined by an ensemble that includes Yuriko Yoshitaka, Munetaka Aoki, Ryota Miyadate, Tasuku Emoto and Joe Odagiri.
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Notably, The Samurai and the Prisoner marks the 70-year-old Kurosawa’s first attempt at a sweeping samurai period feature — a potential late-career culmination for a director whose work has spanned more than 50 films and nearly every other major genre.
Adapted from Honobu Yonezawa’s award-winning novel Kokurojō, winner of both Japan’s 12th Futaro Yamada Award and the 166th Naoki Prize, the film is set during Japan’s tumultuous Sengoku period and unfolds as a drawing-room mystery within the besieged walls of a feudal castle.
Producer Satoko Ishida has called the project “a rare combination of putting jidaigeki [traditional Japanese period drama] and mystery together,” describing it as “an ambitious and provoking journey.” Kurosawa has said in past interviews that Yonezawa himself approached him about the adaptation, an offer the director found intimidating given the genre’s stature in Japanese film history.
The story follows Lord Murashige Araki (Motoki), who, after rising up against the tyrannical warlord Nobunaga Oda, finds himself besieged within his own Arioka Castle. As Oda’s army closes in from outside, a young samurai is murdered within the castle walls, triggering a series of bizarre incidents that throw the fortress into paranoia and suspicion. With traitors potentially among his most trusted retainers, Murashige is forced into an uneasy alliance with Kanbei Kuroda (Suda), a brilliant but dangerous strategist held prisoner in his own dungeon. With the support of his wife Chiyoho (Yoshitaka), Murashige races to uncover the truth before the castle falls.
The film is produced by Shochiku in association with Tokyo Broadcasting System Television.
“I was very positively surprised to learn that the story of the Sengoku warlord Araki Murashige, who rebelled against his lord Oda Nobunaga, will be screened in Cannes, transcending both borders and time,” Kurosawa said in a statement. “If, by good fortune, people overseas can truly understand that this is something that could still happen even today, I would be immensely happy.”
Across his four-decade career, Kurosawa has become one of the most influential figures in contemporary Japanese cinema and a familiar presence at the world’s top festivals — The Samurai and the Prisoner will mark his sixth film in Cannes’ Official Selection.
He first achieved international acclaim with the 1997 serial-killer classic Cure, then helped initiate the J-horror movement with the existential nightmare Pulse (2001). He has since moved fluidly between family drama (Tokyo Sonata, which won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize in 2008), supernatural romance (Journey to the Shore, which won the Un Certain Regard best director prize in 2015), the period spy film (Wife of a Spy, which earned him the Silver Lion for best director at Venice in 2020), French-language genre experiments (Daguerrotype, Serpent’s Path) and, most recently, the internet-culture action thriller Cloud (2024), which premiered at Venice and was selected as Japan’s official submission for the international feature Oscar.
Kurosawa’s influence has also extended beyond his own filmography. He served as a longtime professor at Tokyo University of the Arts from 2005 to 2023, where his students included future Oscar winner Ryusuke Hamaguchi and other figures who have become important voices in contemporary Japanese cinema.
Janus partnered with Sideshow on the U.S. release of Cloud last year. The distributor also recently expanded its interest in the Kurosawa business by giving U.S. fans the rare chance to see two of the director’s cult-favorite works on the big screen for the first time: Chime, his 2024 horror short, and Serpent’s Path (1998), the dark gangland thriller, are currently screening in arthouse cinemas in major cities across the country courtesy of Janus.
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