Winner of the Jury Prize at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival, Woman in the Dunes went on to become one of the most widely seen and praised Japanese films of the sixties. An allegory probing fundamental questions of alienation and identity, the story (adapted by Kobo Abe from his own novel) begins with a young widow confined to a deep pit in the dunes, fed by her neighbors, forced to clear her house constantly of the threatening sands, which would otherwise engulf not only her house but the whole village. To her the villagers bring a passing tourist whom they have trapped into sharing her work and her bed - forever.
“...Teshigahara builds up the erotic tension ... with extreme close-ups that transform the human body into landscape, at one with the glittering sand. In the man's surrender to circumstance the film presents an intelligent, absurdist view of humanity in relation to environment.”