Blood and Bones

In 1923 the young Kim Shun-pei crosses from Cheju Island in Korea to Osaka. Over the years he builds a kamaboko factory in the poor Korean community there and makes money out of it. Over the same years he becomes a monstrous man: he exploits his workers, beats his wife and his children, and turns the house into a zone of terror. The film neither excuses him nor tries to explain him. It simply watches. Yōichi Sai adapted the novel the Zainichi writer Yang Sok-il wrote out of his own father's life. Takeshi Kitano plays Kim, in one of the harshest things he has done for another director. The film won four Japanese Academy awards and was the country's Oscar submission.