Seven decades after it introduced post-war Japanese cinema to astonished audiences around the world, Akira Kurosawa’s gripping thriller is back on the big screen for a strictly limited run.

A samurai (Masayuki Mori) is killed in a remote forest – but who killed him? A court convenes to hear three different versions of what happened – from a bandit (a brilliant Toshiro Mifune), from the samurai’s wife (Machiko Kyō) and from the samurai himself, told through a medium (Noriko Honma) from beyond the grave. Their stories vary wildly – and are further contradicted by a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura), who has his own take on this mysterious event. Winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival and an Honorary Oscar the following year for Most Outstanding Foreign-Language Film, Kurosawa’s dazzling feature is one of the key works of post-war cinema – and one of the greatest films of the 20th century.