In 1971, Akira Kurosawa returned from a five-year filmmaking hiatus to write and direct "Dodes'ka-Den," his first film in color . "Dodes'ka-Den" was famously shot over only 28 days on a relatively low budget. Kurosawa aimed to prove to a younger generation of filmmakers that movies didn't require months-long shoots or giant budgets to work. Sadly, Kurosawa was proven incorrect. "Dodes'ka-Den" was a massive failure at the Japanese box office, and it was critically panned.

The film is set in, essentially, a landfill, and tells the semi-comedic story of the denizens who live there. No one seemed to like it, however, and its failure led Kurosawa into a deep despair. His sadness was compounded by his inability to find funding for any additional movies . He began to question if he was ever

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