A Man Vanishes

Director: Shôhei Imamura

1967 / 130min / DCP

An unruly, boundary-defying figure, Imamura moved freely between documentary and fiction filmmaking throughout his career—and sometimes, as in A Man Vanishes, within the same film. Initiated as a nonfiction work about Japan’s hordes of missing persons, it narrows its focus to the case of a man who disappeared on a business trip, with a professional actor in the role of an investigator pursuing the mystery all the way to a Brechtian blowout of a finale. A little-seen key work in the career of a towering artist.