Shinji Aoyama (青山 真治, Aoyama Shinji, born July 13, 1964) is a Japanese film director, screenwriter, composer, film critic, and novelist. He graduated from Rikkyo University. He won two awards at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival for his film Eureka.

Biography

Shinji Aoyama was born in Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. He began to be interested in cinema when he watched Apocalypse Now and he thought seriously about making films after watching Jean-Luc Godard's films such as Pierrot le Fou and Two or Three Things I Know About Her. He graduated from Rikkyo University, where he was deeply influenced by the film critic Shigehiko Hasumi, from whom he took classes.

After graduating, Aoyama worked as an assistant director to Swiss film director Daniel Schmid, Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Icelandic director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson. He made his directorial debut with the V-Cinema production It's Not in the Textbook! in 1995.

In 1996, Aoyama made Helpless, which is his first feature film. His 2000 film Eureka, also set in Fukuoka, opened at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival where it received both the FIPRESCI prize and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury. Together with the 2007 film Sad Vacation, Eureka and Helpless comprise Aoyama's "Kitakyushu Saga." In 2011, he returned with the romance film Tokyo Park, which won the special Golden Leopard award at the 64th Locarno International Film Festival to honor his whole career. His next film, The Backwater, was released in 2013.

Aoyama's literary output includes his 2001 novelization of Eureka, which won the Yukio Mishima Prize, as well as the novel Hotel Chronicles, which was nominated for the Noma Literary Prize in 2005. He has also contributed as a critic to Cahiers du Cinema Japon and Esquire Japan.

As of 2012, he became a professor in the Department of Moving Images and Performing Arts at Tama Art University.

He is married to Japanese actress Maho Toyota, who played a leading role in Desert Moon.