THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA

“Slyly and powerfully, like Hitchcock’s famous VERTIGO zoom, THE BALLAD OF NARAYAMA lures in our gaze even as [Imamura] pulls us back.” -- Zach Campbell, SLANT

Winner of the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 1983, this harrowing landmark film by Shohei Imamura (THE INSECT WOMAN) cemented his international reputation as one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation. Based on an ancient folktale, Imamura’s magnum opus finds members of an extended farming family eking out their existence against the backdrop of changing seasons. As village lore decrees everyone who reaches the age of 70 must be banished to a mountaintop to die, old Orin finds that her days with her family are coming to an end.