A Samurai in Time

Junichi Yasuda's 2024 Japanese film follows a samurai struck by lightning in the mid-nineteenth century. He wakes on a film set in present-day Kyoto and, without understanding what has happened, begins working as an extra in samurai films. The idea is swordfighting becoming a job. The samurai learns the work of the performers who specialise in dying in fight scenes; for him death had been a serious thing and is now a movement staged again and again. The narrative holds comedy and respect together. The production was extremely small. The director used his own savings, the crew was around ten people, and the film opened on a single screen; it grew by word of mouth into a large box office success and was named best film at Japan's principal cinema award. Who it's for: those interested in samurai cinema and cinema about cinema. Who it's not for: viewers expecting a visually ambitious period film; the scale is deliberately small.