Film Screening: “The Samurai and the Prisoner” ["Kokurojo"] (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2026)

^{Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2026, 147 min, Japan, Japanese with English subtitles}

A brief introduction will be provided by Professor Simon Partner, a core APSI faculty member and historian of Japan. ||| All Screen/Society screenings are free and open to the public.

An Official Selection of the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, Kurosawa Kiyoshi’s enthralling adaptation of Yonezawa Honobu’s prize-winning novel is his first foray into jidaigeki, blending samurai cinema with the murder mystery genre. Kurosawa shows his mastery of the cinematic craft by navigating the novel’s dense narrative with a confident hand, slowly pulling in the audience with an absorbing moral contemplation on the nature of war, and a variation on a familiar genre that is both classical and radical.

Synopsis

The story follows Lord Murashige Araki (Motoki), who, after rising up against the tyrannical warlord Nobunaga Oda, finds himself besieged within his own Arioka Castle. As Oda’s army closes in from outside, a young samurai is murdered within the castle walls, triggering a series of bizarre incidents that throw the fortress into paranoia and suspicion.

With traitors potentially among his most trusted retainers, Murashige is forced into an uneasy alliance with Kanbei Kuroda (Suda), a brilliant but dangerous strategist held prisoner in his own dungeon. With the support of his wife Chiyoho (Yoshitaka), Murashige races to uncover the truth before the castle falls.

Watch the trailer:

Critics’ notes:

"The Samurai and the Prisoner may be set centuries earlier, but it’s a Kurosawa movie through and through. The talk is grave, the editing unhurried; the camera holds multiple characters in the frame and watches them from a sedate remove. The murders and their ensuing investigations have a genuine philosophical density, and Kurosawa uses them to interrogate the mores of the era: the implications of the samurai code, the horrors of war, the nature of individual will, the meaning of courage, and, perhaps most of all, the uses and abuses of religion." -- Justin Chang, The New Yorker

"Leave it to Kiyoshi Kurosawa to make a film that feels like something both new and expansive for him, just as it also contains the same passionate attention to detail that ensures nobody could have made this film in this exact way other than him. ... [N]o matter what is playing out, be it a massive battle or a small conversation, Kurosawa shoots the hell out of all of it. In each mesmerizing move of the camera or precisely-framed shot, he draws us in closer and closer until we can practically feel the grass under our feet while he simultaneously keeps his sharp eye on the bigger picture." -- Chase Hutchinson, TheWrap