Takeshi Kitano

Takeshi Kitano's scenes open slowly in long, perfectly built takes, accumulate a sense of expectation and explode into violence with almost no warning. In Japan he held the television screens as Beat Takeshi, with foul-mouthed commentary, clowning and mockery of the country's view of itself. He came to directing in cinema by accident: he had already been cast in the lead of Violent Cop, and when the first director Kinji Fukasaku left the project he said half in jest that he would do it and took the chair. Sonatine pulled the yakuza genre towards an existential place and became, for many, his signature. Venice gave Fireworks its Golden Lion in 1997. In Zatoichi he took over the blind swordsman Shintaro Katsu had played in a cult series of twenty-six films. Beyond Outrage, from 2012, made him best director at the 7th Asian Film Awards, where the institution writes the title in reverse order, as Outrage Beyond.