The Ballad of Narayama (1983)

Synopsis Set in 19th-century Japan, 69-year-old Orin prepares herself for an inevitable yet frightening ritual called Obasute. In her small village, where food is rare, anyone who lives to 70 is hauled to the mountaintop by their children and left there to die. Before that, she must help her son find a wife. Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Shōhei Imamura’s The Ballad of Narayama presents a stark, unflinching vision of life in a remote 19th-century Japanese village. Imamura weaves together the rhythms of rural survival with the inevitability of mortality, confronting the tension between communal necessity and human dignity, offering a haunting meditation on tradition, sacrifice, and finding meaning in life and death.” The programme is held in conjunction with the 2025 Japanese Film Festival Singapore, and is made possible with the generous support of the Japan Foundation.