Ryuhei Kitamura

• 1. Introduction

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  Ryuhei Kitamura walked out of his high school classroom mid-lesson. He told his teacher directly that he was leaving, and was on a plane to Australia within the week. He was seventeen years old. The decision to become a filmmaker had come the year before, when he concluded that loving movies was reason enough to make them. Born in Osaka Prefecture, Japan, he had spent his adolescent years inside cinemas far more than at school desks. His influences were almost all Australian: George Miller, Russel Mulcahy, and Peter Weir. Even the band INXS appeared on his list. Whether a dropout with no credentials could build a serious filmmaking career out of that conviction was, at that moment, entirely open.

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• 2. The Sydney School

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  The principal's response, as Kitamura later recounted it, came down to one assessment: he thought Kitamura was a funny guy, so he let him in. Kitamura had arrived at a Sydney school for visual arts with no qualifications and simply asked the principal directly to admit him. The two years he spent there gave him structured technical training he had never had before.

  After graduating, Kitamura returned to Japan and established an independent production company he named Napalm Films. His 1997 short film Down to Hell earned an award and drew positive responses from both students and teachers who saw it. Heat after Dark also performed well on the festival circuit. That recognition pushed Kitamura's commitment into a different register, and the natural next step was a feature film funded entirely on his own terms.

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• 3. Versus and the Breakthrough

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  Versus, released in 2000, was independently financed and directed by Kitamura, and it became a cult success. The film launched the careers of actors Tak Sakaguchi and Hideo Sakaki. When it was released on DVD outside Japan in 2004, it brought Kitamura international recognition. The doors it opened were wide.

  In 2002, Kitamura directed Alive and contributed a short film called The Messenger: Requiem for the Dead to the Jam Films anthology project. The following year brought a dense run. He directed Azumi, a screen adaptation of the manga of the same name. Sky High, a prequel to a popular Japanese television drama, was also his work that year. Yudai Yamaguchi, who co-wrote Versus, made his directing debut with Battlefield Baseball in 2003, with Kitamura producing. The Duel Project paired Kitamura with director Yukihiko Tsutsumi. The two challenged each other to produce the best dueling film on a minimal budget and tight timeline. Kitamura's contribution was Aragami. That busy stretch across 2002 and 2003 built a reputation large enough to attract notice well beyond the Japanese film industry. A new kind of commission was coming, from a medium Kitamura had not yet worked in.

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• 4. Metal Gear and Godzilla

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  In 2003, Kitamura took on an unusual assignment. He directed all in-game cutscenes for Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes, a GameCube remake of the iconic stealth game. The Twin Snakes was developed by Silicon Knights and produced by Konami. Unlike earlier entries in the series, it ran on the same engine as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. Kitamura's direction of the cutscenes proved divisive. Critics described the tone as Matrix-like and questioned the realism of the stunts the characters performed. Positive reviews from video game outlets followed regardless.

  Godzilla: Final Wars, released in 2004, was the 28th installment in the kaiju franchise. It was the first of Kitamura's projects to hold its premiere in Hollywood. After directing LoveDeath in 2006, Kitamura left Japan and relocated to Los Angeles, California. Within two years of that move, a Clive Barker adaptation was in production.

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• 5. Hollywood and Beyond

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  On the 1st of August, 2008, Lionsgate distributed The Midnight Meat Train directly to the secondary market rather than theaters. The film was Kitamura's American directing debut, adapted from Clive Barker's short horror story of the same name. Bradley Cooper, Vinnie Jones, and Brooke Shields starred. Critics responded positively, but the film failed commercially.

  No One Lives, starring Luke Evans and Adelaide Clemens, arrived in 2012. It screened in the Midnight Madness section of the Toronto International Film Festival that year. A limited theatrical release followed on the 10th of May, 2013. While promoting No One Lives, Kitamura announced he was working on a film he called his comeback project in Japan. He described it in an interview: 'It's a completely different role than what I've done before.' He added that it would be neither a bloody film nor a horror film, but 'a big action movie.' In November 2013, the project was named as Lupin III, a contemporary adaptation of the manga by Monkey Punch. It opened in Japan on the 30th of August, 2014.

  Kitamura's 2017 thriller Downrange was announced to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017. The film followed a group of road-trip travelers trapped on a country road by a sniper. In 2018, Kitamura directed a segment called Mashit for the anthology horror film Nightmare Cinema.

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• 6. Tastes and Future Plans

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  Kitamura speaks English fluently, a direct result of those years in Sydney. His preferences within the kaiju genre he once helped extend are precise. His favorite Godzilla film is Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla, released in 1974, and his preferred kaiju is King Caesar. He has singled out fellow Japanese filmmaker Shunji Iwai for particular admiration. Kitamura has stated that Iwai's Swallowtail Butterfly is the best Japanese movie ever made. His stated dream project is to direct an installment in the Mad Max franchise. In September 2015, Ubiquity Studios announced that Kitamura would direct a supernatural thriller called Vessels, set to begin filming in early 2016.

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