Born in Tokyo, Japan, 1954. A folksinger and screenwriter, he directed his feature debut “Closing Time” in 1996 and founded the fim production company Monkey Town Productions. Almost all his fims have been self-produced based on original screenplays. Of his 16 feature fims so far, “Bootleg Film” (1999), “Koroshi” (2000), “Man Walking on Snow” (2001) and “Bashing” (2005) were invited to Festival de Cannes, and “Amazing Story” (2003),  “The Rebirth” (2007) and “Where are you?” (2009) were invited in competition to Festival del film Locarno. “The Rebirth” won four prizes at the 60th Festival del film Locarno prizes including the Golden Leopard and the Daniel Schmid award. In 2008,International Film Festival Rotterdam,Festival do Rio and the Buenos Aires International Film Festival hosted a retrospective of his fims to great acclaim.
KOBAYASHI Masahiro makes out of as many as 16 feature films that mostly written and produced by himself.

Retrospective
Interview with Director Masahiro Kobayashi 2010
BAFICI 2008 Retrospective&Focus catarogue