Hamaguchi followed up his five-hour-plus Happy Hour with this beguiling and mysterious film that traces the trajectory of a love—or, to be accurate, two loves—found, lost, displaced, and regained.

Inspired by a Haruki Murakami short story, Hamaguchi spins an engrossing, expansive epic about love and betrayal, grief and acceptance, charting the unexpected, complex relationships that a theater actor-director forges with a trio of people out of professional, physical, or psychological necessity.

Arguably Hamaguchi’s breakthrough film internationally, this immersive, intensely moving drama of female friendship and midlife awakening—which won its four leads a shared Best Actress award at the Locarno Film Festival—uses its epic five-plus-hour runtime to show what other films leave out.

This program brings together two medium-length works, made 13 years apart, that foreground Hamaguchi’s long-held ability to zero in on the nuances and pressure points of (mis)communication.

Hamaguchi’s first theatrical debut feature examines a series of intersecting love triangles as only he can, plunging headlong into the exposed-nerve confessions and unrequited attachments among a group of thirtysomethings.

In this rapturous, altogether delightful triptych of stories, a lively and intricately woven work of imagination that questions whether fate or our own vanities decide our destinies, Hamaguchi again proves he’s one of contemporary cinema’s most agile dramatists of modern love and obsession.

Film at Lincoln Center welcomes multi-instrumentalist composer Eiko Ishibashi, who scored director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car (NYFF59), for the North American premiere of her live performance of GIFT.

In his potent and foreboding new film, Oscar-winning director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car) reconstitutes the boundaries of the ecopolitical thriller with the tale of a serene rural village that’s about to be disrupted by the construction of a glamping site for Tokyo tourists.