The standard bearer of the 1990s new wave of Japanese film, Shunji Iwai cranked out some of that country's hippest, hottest, and most popular movies. A self-styled eizo sakka, or visual artist, Iwai is a filmmaker equally at home directing commercials, TV dramas, rock videos, and feature length pictures. Though older critics have blasted his films for lacking depth and for borrowing from 1970s experimental auteur Shuji Terayama, Iwai understands that for an audience weaned on MTV, the image is the movie. Slick and oozing with style, his films consistently have an uncanny resonance with 1990s Japanese pop culture, making him one of the most important directors of his generation.

Born on January 24th, 1963, in the northern city of Sendai, Iwai started his filmmaking career in 1988 directing music videos and television dramas. Though he was already garnering considerable buzz by 1993 for his acclaimed one-hour late-night TV dramas Fried Dragon Fish and Uchiage Hanabi: Shita kara Miru ka? Yoko kara Miru ka?, Iwai's true mainstream breakthrough came in 1995 with his gorgeously-rendered romance Love Letter. About a young woman who writes a letter to her dead lover — and mysteriously gets a reply — the film proved to be an amazing success for the fledgling Japanese director. …  » Read more