Genius provocateur Nagisa Oshima an influential 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.
