Ryusuke Hamaguchi may have won the Oscar© for Drive My Car, but his other feature of 2021 is every bit as wonderful. An erotically-charged anthology film that took the Silver Bear in Berlin, these three tales of fate and desire unfold with singularly compelling delicacy and emotional openness.

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s intimate and immersive Happy Hour is one of the best films of the past decade. Equally devoted to the innermost feelings of its characters is his follow-up, Asako I & II, an entrancing, Vertigo-inspired romance mystery, featuring a lively soundtrack by J-Pop star Tofubeats.

Thirteen years before he won an Oscar® for Drive My Car, Ryūsuke Hamaguchi delivered this shattering Rohmerian drama as his university thesis film. An intricately knitted tale of love, friendship, and recrimination, Passion sees one of the great contemporary writer-directors emerge fully formed.