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.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with critic Tony Rayns
- New high-definition digital transfer of director Nagisa Oshima’s 1965 experimental short documentary Diary of Yunbogi
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Howard Hampton and a 1968 director's statement by Oshima
New cover by Adam Maida