The grand illusionist

What you see on the surface of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films is not always what you carry away with you.

The Japanese director's productions have a habit of lingering, as specific moments return and the atmosphere he creates continues to unnerve, long after the curtain has come down. And the 58-year-old Kurosawa wouldn't have things any other way: he wants to get inside your head with his films.

"There's not really a part of me that takes enjoyment from making the audience anxious," he says with a sly smirk that leaves him sounding less than entirely convincing. "But anxiety is a part of everyday life that interests me. Everyone has their own anxieties and I like to explore what these are, or might be. What makes you worry? Anxiety comes from not knowing. It's a fear of the unknown. So I like to explore how people react to the unknown, to the things that are not under their control," he says.

It's the "unknown" that sits at the centre of Real, which begins with a man (Takeru Sato) trying to rouse his partner (Haruka Ayase) from a coma. The film - loosely based on the novel A Perfect Day for Plesiosaur by Rokuro Inui - begins as a simple mystery but by its end has expanded its reach into a deeper meditation on the very concept of "memory" and on how human beings define what is real in our lives and what is not.

"In the novel, the trick was trying to differentiate between what was real and what was being imagined," Kurosawa says. "The most difficult part was taking that into a film and making it all still seem believable."

Real does have moments when a suspension of belief is required - it would be giving the game away to reveal just when - but by its end you'll walk out wondering just how much of what you have seen is meant to be taken literally.