Kobayashi became the first Japanese filmmaker to win the Grand Prize at the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival.
[2] In its wake, he founded Monkey Town Productions and made three films back to back which won prizes in three consecutive years at Cannes: Kaizokuban Bootleg Film (1999) and Man Walking on Snow (2001) in Un Certain Regard and Koroshi (2000) in the Directors' Fortnight.
[4] “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.
Kobayashi makes out of as many as 16 feature films that are mostly written and produced by himself.