Nagisa Ōshima
Nagisa Ōshima (大島 渚, Ōshima Nagisa; 31 March 1932 – 15 January 2013) was a Japanese filmmaker, writer, and left-wing activist best known for his fiction feature films, of which he directed 23 in a career spanning from 1959 to 1999. He is often regarded as one of the greatest... Read full bio →
Gohatto
Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering around a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano.
Max mon amour
The wife of a British diplomat in Paris takes a chimpanzee as her lover.
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
Island of Java, 1942, during World War II. British Major Jack Celliers arrives at a Japanese prison camp, run by the strict Captain Yonoi.
Ai no borei
In a small Japanese village at the end of the 19th century, a rickshaw driver's wife takes on a much younger lover and the two conspire to murder him.
Ai no korîda
A fictionalized retelling of the story of Sada Abe, whose affair with her master quickly turned obsessive and sadomasochistic.
Natsu no imôto
Sunaoko come to Okinawa to find his brother Tsuruo. Her searching is not very painless because it tears up old wounds in complicated relationships, some of which date back to the horrors of war.
Gishiki
Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.
Tôkyô sensô sengo hiwa
A metaphysical mystery involving a university student's camera getting stolen, and the thief then committing suicide. Looking back upon the event, the situation comes to be questioned if it happened at all.
Shinjuku dorobô nikki
This is the story of a bookstore thief named Birdy, who is led through various adventures in Tokyo's Shinjuku district by salesgirl Umeko.
Kôshikei
A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but somehow survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.
Kaette kita yopparai
Three students spend their holidays at the seaside where they are mistaken for Koreans, a minority which is looked down on in Japan. The action develops into a crime story.
Ninja bugei-chô
The son of an assassinated feudal lord, in the Muromachi period, attempts to avenge his father's death and meets Kagemaru, a renegade ninja helping peasants and farmers rebel against Oda Nobunaga's regime, all depicted through an experimental form of filming pages from the original manga set to sound.
Nihon shunka-kô
This movie is about four male high school students who took their university entrance exams and are just hanging around mostly.
Muri shinjû: Nihon no natsu
A sex-obsessed young woman, a suicidal young man she meets on the street, a gun-crazy wannabe gangster—these are just three of the irrational, oddball anarchists trapped in an underground hideaway in Oshima’s devilish, absurdist portrait of what he deemed the “death drive” in Japanese youth culture.
Taiyô no hakaba
In Osaka's slum, capricious folks without futures engage in pilfering, assault and robbery, prostitution, and the trading of ID cards and blood.
Seishun zankoku monogatari
A budding gangster enthralls a freeloading young woman, soon taking advantage of her knack for hitch-hiking to rob middle-class, middle-aged men.
Nihon no yoru to kiri
Long takes and a highly theatrical visual approach combine to form a tense and confrontational look at the decline of a socialist student activists' movement in Japan.
Ai to kibô no machi
Trying to make ends meet this way, Masuo also receives help from his teacher who is trying to land him a good job and he also falls under the wing of Kyoko, an older student whose heart is touched after Masuo sells his pigeons to her. However, after his scam is revealed, can these feelings truly remain the same?