"The path of Iwai Shunji's career is unique in Japan. He started out in television, making a dozen short- and medium-length films including 1993's Fried Dragon Fish, starring a young Asano Tadanobu, and Fireworks, Shall We See It From the Side or the Bottom?. The latter won an award from the Directors' Guild of Japan, something unprecedented for a TV movie. He found his next outlet at the 9pm \"late show\" screenings at theaters, where he exhibited his 47-minute Undo about the madness inherent in love. The hallmarks that defined his career - poetic works with fresh visuals, sensual soundtracks and Japan's most beautiful actors - were already evident. His first feature-length film was the 72-minute Picnic, starring Asano and singer Chara as escapees from an asylum, but the first to reach cinemas was his classic Love Letter in 1995. The parallel-timeline romance is about a young widow who sends a letter to her dead husband in his Hokkaido hometown, only to get a reply from his female classmate with the same name. The film brought Iwai legions of fans across Asia; while it sold out theaters in Japan for 14 weeks, it played in Hong Kong for 30 straight weeks and became the must-see film for students in South Korea where Japanese films were still banned. The first phase of Iwai's career came to a close with the release of his wildly ambitious Swallowtail Butterfly the following year. Set in an alternative Japan, home to millions of immigrants in shanty towns, it stars Chara as a wannabe pop star whose dreams are realized when her 'Yen Town' comrades get rich using the most ingenious currency scam ever committed to celluloid. Ahead of its time for its depiction of a multi-racial Japan, its adoption of world-class CGI in an extraordinary butterfly sequence, and its multi-media marketing campaign, it also marked Iwai's withdrawal from Japan's rigid film industry. Two years after the sprawling 146-minute Swallowtail, Iwai returned with his smallest movie yet, the perfectly-formed 67-minute April Story about a female student moving into her own apartment and experiencing first love. Iwai not only wrote, directed and edited the film, but also produced it, composed its music, and self-distributed it. It marked a new self-reliance and a necessary detachment that would later see him becoming his own cinematographer. He has since made films in New York, Vancouver and Paris, directed an animated feature, and set up a company in Shanghai where he is about to launch the next phase of his career."