A twenty-something man emerges from a decade-long coma and tries to reassemble his now-separated family in Kurosawa's most personal and invigorating work, a family melodrama without a family. The world won't be quite as you remember it, warns a doctor to the just-awakened Yutaka. Don't worry: you'll recover what you lost. The only person that seems to care, however, is his father's old friend Fujimori (Koji Yakusho), who takes him to what's left of home, a former dude ranch (!) now turned carp farm. As his divorced parents and estranged sister slowly emerge from their various new lives, a new kind of family forms in the wreckage, but sooner or late for Yutaka, it's about time I woke up. Fashioning a Rip Van Winkle-by-way-of-Samuel-Beckett yarn with his typical dry wit and uncanny sense of poise and timing, Kurosawa perfects the strangest–and most existential–family tale you'll ever see, using the genre to explore not just family, but self.

In Person: Kiyoshi Kurosawa