The screenplay, by Imamura and Toshiro Ishido, is based on a novel by Masuji Ibuse.

NEWYORKER: Black Rain

The occasional bursts of violence are brutal, but Imamura manages to bring humor and a gentle poignancy to the affair.

CNN: OT ONLY DID HONG

Shohei Imamura, a winner last year, was this year out of competition.

ECONOMIST: The Cannes Film Festival

Imamura Shohei's occasionally raw story of an ex-con gradually returning to the fold of humanity is a sharp look at contemporary Japan.

CNN: OT ONLY DID HONG

If Imamura Shohei is the film-maker "obsessed with the lower part of the body and of society, " then Nakagami was his literary counterpart.

CNN: VIEWS FROM THE FRINGE

Imamura has transformed this Hiroshima story into a Sartrean soap opera.

NEWYORKER: Black Rain

The director, Shohei Imamura, treats the bombing itself with telling poetic concision, as a series of awful tableaux flashing before us with the speed of memory.

NEWYORKER: Black Rain