BLEAK WEEK: DEATH BY HANGING

Genius provocateur Nagisa Ōshima, a towering figure in the Japanese New Wave of the 1960s, made one of his most startling political statements with the compelling pitch-black satire DEATH BY HANGING. In this macabre farce, a Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next. At once disturbing and oddly amusing, Oshima’s constantly surprising film is a subversive and surreal indictment of both capital punishment and the treatment of Korean immigrants in his country.

"Ōshima is often likened to Godard, but I think the true kindred spirit is Fassbinder — for the restless intellect and furious productivity, and the rage, wit, and lucidity with which they probed their respective national psyches. DEATH BY HANGING of the most devastating films ever made about racism." - Dennis Lim