In this deeply unsettling masterwork, director Kiyoshi Kurosawa examines the senselessness of violence in a major metropolis. By utilizing a procedural structure, the inexplicable nature of human connection is personified in the image of a lone drifter, sowing unrest and psychological terror wherever he goes.

Starring legend of Japanese cinema Koji Yakusho (Perfect Days, Tampopo), Kurosawa utilizes the full breadth of filmmaking techniques to place the audience in the shoes of Yakusho’s detective, slowly driven mad by the ever-evasive solution to a series of murders affecting his personal and professional lives. With perhaps the most effective sound design ever put to film, and startling compositions that traverse tone and emotion with each heart-stopping cut, no other filmmaker has ever achieved such a visceral representation of a journey into the heart of darkness.

Screening 3/11 + 3/27

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