Filmmakers Scott McGehee and David Siegel aren't known for blockbusters, but their films, including the duo's 1994 debut feature "Suture," have a reputation for artful framing and pensive little spaces of silence in the dialogue. McGehee and Siegel attribute this trick to their deep admiration for Japanese films, particularly "Tanin no Kao (The Face of Another)" by Hiroshi Teshigahara.

"That movie was made in the mid 1960s, and back then, everything was widescreen," Siegel tells The Japan Times. "But Japanese movies were different, a lot of directors didn't use widescreen. So they had a completely different sense of time, space and texture."

Siegel's directing partner McGehee was once a high school exchange student in Shiga Prefecture, and he says, "I can still make out some Japanese words and phrases. So it's fun for me to listen to the translation during press interviews. I try and match up the Japanese phrases to what I've been saying."