40th Anniversary Restoration 

With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare’s King Lear against a bloody, feudal backdrop. The differences between the Japanese director’s work and the Bard’s play are not merely superficial transpositions …All three of his regular DOPs – Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda, Asakazu Nakai – worked on Ran, a film he surely intended as his last great cinematic statement. He spent more than ten years on the detailed hand-painted tableaux that would become the film’s storyboards. A similar level of painstaking undertaking was required at all levels. Costume designer Emi Wada won an Academy Award for her work on Ran; she spend three to four months on every painted silk robe. One can never be short of things to look at while Kurasawa’s Ran is in the world. – Irish Times

“RAN is one of the cinema’s greatest works, a film of true tragic vision.” – Chicago Tribune