During the Sengoku “Warring States” Period, a peasant thief (the great Tatsuya Nakadai) who bars uncanny resemblance to the dying daimyō Takeda Shingen (also Nakadai) is elected to impersonate him as a political decoy, a kagemusha. When Shingen is killed in a siege, his generals resolve to keep his death a secret and teach this kagemusha the daimyō’s retinue. With Shingen’s ghost haunting, his son growing power-hungry and the clan’s enemies sensing weakness, the hapless kagemusha must become Shingen entirely – lead the clan or die.

Sharing the Palme d’Or in 1980 with All That Jazz, Kurosawa’s saturated samurai epic takes a stab at historical fiction, examining the absurd nature of power. Stunningly designed and shot, featuring awe-inspiring spectacle and thousands of extras, the incredible scope of Kagemusha was achieved with the help of executive producers Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas who even agreed to do Suntory whisky ads to boost the film’s budget.