After the success of Star Wars, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola teamed up to executive produce Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior), Akira Kurosawa’s triumphant return to large-scale filmmaking that took home the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980. Sengoku period Japan comes to life with a historic budget and massive, colorful armies to tell the story of the legendary Takeda clan’s downfall. With domestic and international distribution, this is the rare Kurosawa film with multiple versions, the differences between which we go into detail on. 

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Tim has a particular soft spot for this one and has a published article available on the Asian cinema website Filmed In Ether dissecting Kagemusha’s use of shadows and how they aptly reflect the film’s legacy 40 years later. Read it here: https://www.filmedinether.com/features/kagemusha-40-year-anniversary-kurosawa/