We don’t always realize how much cinema has changed—until a Kurosawa trailer drops and reminds us how it began.
Film Forum in New York City just released the official trailer for Kurosawa in 4K, a two-week screening series co-presented with Janus Films, running from July 18–31, 2025. It’s not just a greatest-hits reel; it’s a full-bodied immersion into a filmmaker who captured moral chaos, personal duty, and rain-slick sword fights like no one else. Nine of Akira Kurosawa’s classics—Throne of Blood, Stray Dog, High and Low, The Hidden Fortress, Ikiru, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Rashomon, and yes, even Seven Samurai—are returning to the big screen, many of them newly remastered in 4K and showing in the U.S. for the first time.
Let that settle in. We’re talking about first-ever U.S. theatrical 4K presentations of some of the most imitated films in global cinema. The films George Lucas borrowed from. The stories Sergio Leone dressed in ponchos. The shots Scorsese still studies.
And the trailer doesn’t play coy. It’s drenched in mood—black-and-white tension, ghostly silhouettes, and the existential anguish of men staring into fate. There’s that line: “We only realize how beautiful life is… when we face death.” You feel it like a knock to the chest. It isn’t marketing—it’s a manifesto.
Presented with precision by Toho Co., Ltd., the restorations span genres: noir, jidaigeki, psychological drama. And while everyone’s seen Seven Samurai by now—if not, cancel your weekend plans—they’re giving the same reverence to lesser-shown marvels like The Hidden Fortress and Stray Dog. (Honestly, Stray Dog is Kurosawa’s Taxi Driver, only with more sweat and moral reckoning.)
One curious detail: Rashomon, unlike the others, is a 2K restoration—courtesy of the Academy Film Archive and partners—but its place in the lineup is no less vital. It’s the Rosetta Stone of unreliable narratives. And seeing it projected again, grain and all, feels like peering through time.
This isn’t just a retrospective. It’s a resurrection.
There’s a cultural tension here, too—modern audiences flooded with bite-sized content suddenly staring down 140-minute morality plays with silence, stillness, and consequence. Will they show up? Or has TikTok devoured our attention spans beyond repair?
Well, maybe it doesn’t matter. If even one person walks out of Ikiru this summer thinking about what they’re doing with their life—that’s reason enough.
So, NYC cinephiles: July 18 to 31. Nine films. Nine reasons to sit in the dark and let a master speak in the language of wind, fog, and broken honor.
Just don’t forget to breathe during Throne of Blood.
