Woman in the Dunes

Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara

1964 / 147min / 35mm

One of several coruscating adaptations that the formidable Teshigahara made from the novels of Kôbô Abe, this landmark of the Japanese New Wave stars Eiji Okada as an entomologist who, while searching for rare insects around a secluded village, comes into contact with Kyōko Kishida, a lonely woman living at the bottom of a large, sandy pit who seems to want to keep him for a specimen of her own. As he’s entrapped and forcibly recruited to keep her home clear of the shifting sands that threaten to bury it, Teshigahara’s fantastic psychodrama evolves into a curiously recognizable commentary on the wearisome routines that make up all of our lives.