Shōhei Imamura

An assistant to Ozu at Shochiku, Imamura went on to film the people Ozu's films left out: pimps, hustlers, farmers, sex workers, and women who get by on nerve. The Insect Woman follows Tome from a poor village childhood through decades of survival. Pigs and Battleships sets small-time yakuza feeding off an American naval base. The Ballad of Narayama takes place in a village where everyone who turns seventy must go up the mountain to die.

Signature

• Tenacious lower-class women at the centre (The Insect Woman, Intentions of Murder).
• People compared to animals and insects, starting with the titles.
• Rural Japan and its older beliefs (Profound Desires of the Gods, The Ballad of Narayama).
• A true-crime study of a killer on the run (Vengeance Is Mine).