Kurosawa got his start directing in the 1980s, working on low-budget V-cinema (direct to video) productions such as formula yakuza pictures. In the early 1990s Kurosawa won a scholarship to the Sundance Institute, and was able to study filmmaking in America although he had been directing for nearly ten years professionally.
Kurosawa first achieved international acclaim with his hypnotic serial killer film Cure (1997). Also that year, Kurosawa experimented by filming two thrillers back-to-back, Serpent's Path and Eyes of the Spider, both of which shared the same premise (a father taking revenge for his child's murder) and lead actor (Sho Aikawa) but spun entirely different stories.
Kurosawa followed up Cure with a semi-sequel, Charisma (1999), which established his penchant for apocalyptic imagery and themes of identity and isolation. In 2001 Kurosawa directed Pulse, a bleak and striking horror film about ghosts invading the world of the living via the Internet. Most recently Kurosawa has released Bright Future (2003), starring Asano Tadanobu; this is his first film shot using a 24P HiDef camera.
Kurosawa's directing style has been compared to that of Stanley Kubrick and Andrei Tarkovsky, though he has never expressly listed those directors as influences. In interviews Kurosawa has voiced admiration for American films of the early 1970s.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is not in any way related to Akira Kurosawa.