The Present, Running Alongside the World
In 1997, Takeshi Kitano's Hana-bi won the Golden Lion in Venice — the first Japanese film to do so in thirty-nine years, since 1958. What's interesting is the order things happened in. At home, he was known first as a comedian. Recognition of him as a director came from abroad first, and Japan caught up only after this award. The phrase 'Kitano, world-famous' spread from that point on.
The same year, Shohei Imamura's The Eel won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. It shared the award that year with Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry — the year the 'Asian New Waves' band on the left side of this map and this band on the right side met on the same prize.
One more note, about the name of the prize itself. When Teinosuke Kinugasa's Gate of Hell won at Cannes in 1954, it won the Grand Prix, not the Palme d'Or — the name didn't exist yet. That win led the festival to commission a jeweler, and starting the following year, the golden palm trophy was made. A Japanese film's award brought the prize its name.
The channel has kept flowing since the 2010s. In 2018, Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters won the Palme d'Or — twenty-one years after The Eel. Kore-eda regards Ken Loach as a mentor, and has said that his practice of withholding the script from actors follows Loach's method. In 2021, Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car won the screenplay award at Cannes, and the following year won Best International Feature at the Academy Awards — the first Japanese film to do so, and the first ever nominated for Best Picture. Hamaguchi's university graduation thesis was on John Cassavetes.
There's a story about Hamaguchi from the year before that award. In April 2020, as the pandemic threatened to close small theaters across the country, he and Koji Fukada launched a relief fund. The ¥100 million goal was passed in two days; the fund eventually raised ¥330 million and reached 118 theaters. Before the world found him, he went to protect the place that had raised him.