DIRECTOR: Arthur Harari
PRODUCER: Nicolas Anthomé
PRODUCTION CO: Bathysphere, TBC
SCREENPLAY: Arthur Harari, Vincent Poymiro, Bernard Cendron
EDITOR: Laurent Sénéchal
MUSIC: Sebastuabi De Gennaro, Enrico Gabriell, Andrea Poggio, Gak Sato, Olivier Marguerit
WITH: Endo Yuya (young Onoda Hiroo), Tsuda Kenji (old Onoda Hiroo), Matsuura Yuya (young Kozuka Kinshichi), Chiba Tetsuya (old Kozuka Kinshichi), Kato Shinsuke (Shimada), Inowaki Kai (Akatsu) 

FESTIVALS: Cannes

REVIEWS

“No man is an island, but for 29 years, until his final surrender in 1974, Hiroo Onoda came as close as any man could. Leading an ever-dwindling band of Japanese holdouts who refused to believe their nation had lost the war, Onoda continued to carry out minor guerrilla attacks on the residents of the small Philippine island of Lubang for almost three decades, until it was just him left, hiding in the underbrush, subsisting on a diet of zealotry and whatever he could scavenge or steal.

It’s a famous, fabulously knotty, semi-surreal story, fraught with allegorical potential… made, by French director Arthur Harari, into a potent, satisfying saga of old-school, muscular filmmaking. Part John Ford, part Sam Fuller, the film’s old-fashioned approach is oddly impressive: To tell this kind of story in such blunt-edged, straightforward style is a distinctive choice when the temptation to veer into revisionist war-is-hell commentary, Malickian nature-study or Herzogian descent-into-madness bombast must have been strong.”

– Jessica Kiang, Variety

“Arthur Hirari transforms the true story of a Japanese soldier’s refusal to accept the end of the Second World War into a heartbreaking drama of the ridiculous.”

– Xan Brooks, The Observer

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

Auckland  
Monday, 11 May, 6.00pm

Tauranga     
Wednesday, 27 May, 6.00pm

Nelson  
Wednesday, 17 June, 6.00pm 

​Palmerston North
​Wednesday, 22 July, 6.00pm

​Hamilton
​Monday, 14 September, 6.30pm
FRENCH CONNECTIONS  >> 
French Connections is presented in
​co-operation with the Institut Français and the Embassy of France