Directed by the visionary Nagisa Ōshima, Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967)—originally titled Muri Shinjū: Nihon no Natsu—is a surreal, avant-garde exploration of nihilism, sex, and death during a turbulent era in Japanese history.
Directed by Kaneto Shindō, The Naked Island (Hadaka no Shima) is a 1960 masterpiece of visual storytelling. It is most famous for its radical narrative choice: though it is not a “silent film” in the traditional sense (it features a lush score and ambient sounds), there is not a single word of spoken dialogue throughout its entire 96-minute runtime.