The 1950 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa that tells its story from multiple perspectives is Rashomon.
The film follows conflicting accounts of a murder and the rape of a woman, presented through the testimony of several witnesses. A bandit, the woman, the dead samurai speaking through a medium, and a woodcutter each offer a different version of events. Their stories contradict one another, making certainty itself the film's central subject.
Kurosawa co-wrote the screenplay with Shinobu Hashimoto, adapting stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. The film's daring structure and Kazuo Miyagawa's cinematography helped introduce Japanese cinema to a much wider international audience. Its title later became associated with the “Rashomon effect,” a situation in which people remember or describe the same event in incompatible ways.
Rashomon premiered in Tokyo on August 25, 1950. After winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, it became an international breakthrough and received an Honorary Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1952. It is not the same film as Kurosawa's later samurai adventures Seven Samurai or Yojimbo.