Subscribe to watch - 14-day free trial, then £4.99 a month
Woman of the Dunes
Hiroshi Teshigahara's mystifying, serene and provocative fable about an entomologist who becomes trapped in a young widow’s desert shack.
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1964 147 mins
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Overview
An entomologist misses the last bus home and spends the night sharing a young widow’s desert shack, only to find the next morning that he’s unable to leave. He soon becomes psychologically and erotically entangled in her strange existence, which includes a daily ritual of shovelling away endlessly drifting sand.
Winner of a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1964 and nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film and Best Director, the film combines an extremely erotic drama with a terrifically gripping thriller. Adapted from Kobe Abe’s novel by acclaimed director Hiroshi Teshigahara, the film also features startling high-contrast black and white photography from Hiroshi Segawa and a superb minimalist score by Toru Takemitsu.
- Director
- Hiroshi Teshigahara
- Featuring
- Eiji OkadaKyoko KishidaHiroko Ito
- Genres
- Animation & Artists Moving Image
- Certificate
- Contains moderate sex and sexual assault
- Released
- 1964
- Country
- Japan
- Language
- Japanese with English subtitles
Related
Animation & Artists Moving Image
Lek and the Dogs
Animation & Artists Moving Image 2017 92 mins Director: Andrew Kötting
Andrew Kötting returns with an emotionally affecting and politically resonant multi-genre adaptation of Hattie Naylor’s play.
This Unnameable Little Broom
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1985 11 mins Director: Brothers Quay
The Brothers Quay take on the Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, presenting the character as a childlike figure who sets a series of vicious traps to catch Enkidu, the guileless forest creature.
In Absentia
Animation & Artists Moving Image 2000 20 mins Director: Brothers Quay
The Brothers Quay's powerful visualisation of a piece by Karlheinz Stockhausen. A woman alone in a room repeatedly writes a letter with tiny broken off pieces of pencil lead. Outside her window, vistas of ever-changing light register her every emotion.
The Comb
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1990 18 mins Director: Brothers Quay
A woman dreams of a fairytale landscape populated by ladders and sinister puppets.
Nocturna Artificialia
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1979 21 mins Director: Brothers Quay
The debut film from the Brothers Quay follows a dreamer who's seduced by the mystery of the city at night. He leaves his room and goes into the street, where a tram-car carries him away.
Street of Crocodiles
Animation & Artists Moving Image 1986 21 mins Director: Brothers Quay
The Quays' best-known (and highest budgeted) short takes place in nightmarish netherworld populated by strange and sinister puppets.
Classic Cannes Festival
The Shout
Drama 1978 83 mins Director: Jerzy Skolimowski
Cannes’ Grand Jury Prize was awarded to this unnerving drama about a man who claims to be able to kill people with a ‘terror shout’ learned from an Aboriginal shaman.
Tulpan
Comedy 2008 99 mins Director: Sergey Dvortsevoy
Sergei Dvortsevoy's feature debut is a deliciously droll tale of a Kazakh sailor out to win a wife and set himself up as a shepherd on the steppes.
Symptoms
Drama 1974 91 mins Director: José R. Larraz
The official British Palme d'Or entry at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, Symptoms is a sophisticated modern gothic horror film exploring the themes of sexual repression and psychosis.
Before the Revolution
Drama 1964 107 mins Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Bernardo Bertolucci's beautifully operatic film celebrates the passion and ideology of the 1960s, winner of the Cannes Critics' Week prize in 1964.
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
Biopic 1974 109 mins Director: Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog’s poetic account of the historical character who captivated 19th-century Nuremberg after emerging from isolation after 16 years in a cellar.
Young Soul Rebels
Drama 1991 105 mins Director: Isaac Julien
The Queen's Silver Jubilee beats to the sounds of Funkadelic, Sylvester and the O'Jays in Isaac Julien’s feature debut.
New
Lek and the Dogs
Animation & Artists Moving Image 2017 92 mins Director: Andrew Kötting
Andrew Kötting returns with an emotionally affecting and politically resonant multi-genre adaptation of Hattie Naylor’s play.
The Seventh Seal
Fantasy 1957 96 mins Director: Ingmar Bergman
Ingmar Bergman’s best-known film is a brilliant allegorical drama starring Max von Sydow as a knight trying to elude his own death.
The Square Circle
Drama 1996 108 mins Director: Amol Palekar
Amol Palekar’s groundbreaking film follows the journey of young woman who reinvents herself as a man after she's kidnapped and attacked.
Rocco and His Brothers
Drama 1960 179 mins Director: Luchino Visconti
Italian maestro Luchino Visconti’s epic drama follows a mother and her five sons who move from a small town to Milan, changing their lives forever.
La Grande Bouffe
Comedy 1973 130 mins Director: Marco Ferreri
Marco Ferreri's provocative and controversial satire about four friends who retreat to a country mansion with the intention of eating themselves to death.
Wind from the East
Drama 1969 93 mins Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin's radical film deconstructs both a factory strike and the Hollywood western - simultaneously.