Shunji Iwai cut his teeth directing music videos and short television dramas in the late-80s. In 1996, Swallowtail Butterfly—a gritty, kinetic coming-of-age crime story—became his breakthrough hit, going on to win Most Popular Film at the Japanese Academy Awards. (Quentin Tarantino has said that Swallowtail Butterfly “was to Japan what Pulp Fiction was to America.”) Four years later the Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno cast Iwai in his experimental drama Ritual, which currently sits as the 198th highest rated film of all-time on Letterboxd. Iwai’s All About Lily Chou-Chou, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, is perhaps the director’s most enduring (and prescient) classic. It follows a 14-year-old Web 1.0 music message-board user unhealthily obsessed with Lily Chou-Chou, a fictional pop star under whose name a real accompanying soundtrack was made that garnered its own cult following. (Tarantino featured “The Wound That Heals” by Chou-Chou in Kill Bill Vol. 1.) Starting in June, the Metrograph is screening a series focused on Iwai—for which he will appear in person—giving New Yorkers the opportunity to dive deep into one of Japan’s most unique auteurs. “I believe that the cause of human disaster can be connected with our desire for wealth,” said Iwai in 2016. “I do know that the world is always unfair and stupid and dirty … but beautiful.” —Spike Carter