About

Masuo (Kenzō Kawarasaki), the surviving heir of the traditional Sakurada family, is trapped in a suffocating cycle of weddings and funerals, where ritual overrides meaning. Captured in Huludao, northeast China, and repatriated to Japan with his mother at the end of World War Two, Masuo experiences the reconstruction of postwar Japan through the fractures of his own family. As these ceremonies unfold with increasing absurdity, a decade-long chronicle of heartbreak, taboos and obsessive nationalism gradually emerges.

One of the most subversive works by provocative filmmaker Nagisa Ōshima, The Ceremony delivers a scathing portrait of postwar Japan through the disintegration of the Sakurada clan. Dancing between past and present, Ōshima's film draws unsettling parallels between national identity and familial authority, mirroring the rise and collapse of militaristic Japan with biting irony and formal precision.

War songs, drunken chants and allusions to the American occupation underscore a society struggling to redefine itself. Both epic and deeply intimate, The Ceremony was awarded Best Film at the 1971 Kinema Junpo Awards.

Ages 15+ | Contains strong violence, sexual violence and sex scenes