Akira Kurosawa

Four irreconcilable accounts of a killing in a forest, told by survivors sheltering at a ruined gate (1950)

Rashomon — won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1951 and gave English the 'Rashomon effect'.

A starving farming village hires masterless swordsmen to see off the bandits who raid its harvest (1954)

Seven Samurai — remade as The Magnificent Seven (1960); the template for every 'assembling the team' film.

A grey municipal clerk, told he has months to live, forces a children's playground through the bureaucracy and sings on its swing in the snow (1952)

Ikiru ('To Live') — remade in English as Living (2022), scripted by Kazuo Ishiguro.

A shabby, shoulder-twitching masterless swordsman sets two rival gangs in a dusty town against each other (1961)

Yojimbo — remade unofficially as A Fistful of Dollars (1964), which cost Sergio Leone a lawsuit.

Macbeth in feudal Japan: a general goaded by a forest spirit's prophecy, killed at last in a storm of arrows (1957)

Throne of Blood — Mifune was shot at with real arrows by trained archers.

King Lear recast with three sons instead of three daughters, and a burning castle (1985)

Ran — his last epic, financed partly from France; won the Oscar for Best Costume Design.

A thief spared execution is made to impersonate a dead warlord so his clan's enemies do not learn of the death (1980)

Kagemusha ('Shadow Warrior') — shared the Palme d'Or with All That Jazz; Lucas and Coppola secured its foreign backing.

A Russian army surveyor in the Siberian taiga is saved and schooled by an ageing indigenous hunter (1975)

Dersu Uzala — made in the Soviet Union, and the film that won him a competitive Academy Award.