Kobayashi Masahiro, the award-winning Japanese director of Cannes title Bashing and Locarno winner The Rebirth, has died aged 68.
The filmmaker died in Tokyo on August 20 following a five-year battle with cancer, according to reports.
In a career that spanned three decades, Kobayashi had four films play at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Golden Leopard at Locarno with The Rebirth in 2007.
Born in Tokyo, Kobayashi was initially a folk singer before moving into writing scripts for television.
His feature directorial debut came in 1996 with Closing Time, which won the grand prize at Japan’s Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival.
That same year, Kobayashi founded Monkey Town Productions and made three films that won prizes at three consecutive editions of Cannes: Kaizokuban Bootleg Film in 1999 and Man Walking on Snow in 2001, both in Un Certain Regard; and Koroshi, which played in Directors’ Fortnight in 2000.
In 2005, his drama Bashing played in Competition at Cannes, going on to win the grand prize at Tokyo Filmex. Based on a true story, the film tells the story of a humanitarian worker who is taken hostage in Iraq and returns to Japan but finds herself a community outcast for “causing trouble”.
The Rebirth followed in 2007, in which Kobayashi also starred as the father of a murdered girl. It became the first Japanese film to win Locarno’s biggest prize since 1970.
His final film was Lear On The Shore, starring Nakadai Tatsuya as a former leading actor who has developed dementia in his old age, slipping away from his retirement home in search of a new audience. It was released in 2017, playing the Beijing International Film Festival in 2018.
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