Director of cult classic Tetsuo had always admired the Hollywood legend’s films and was surprised his own work was recognised by Scorcese at an audition for the role of a Christian villager in the samurai-era epic Violence pulsates in Shinya Tsukamoto’s early films, driving stories into nightmarish fantasies like in the award-winning 1989 Tetsuo , which ridicules middle-class conformity with a man-becomes-machine metamorphosis. His more recent works still depict violence, though the Japanese director says the nature of the violence has changed – from whimsical “cyberpunk” horror to horrifying reality.