1962 | Japan | Fiction

Otoshiana (Pitfall)

  • Japanese 97 mins
  • Director | Hiroshi Teshigahara
  • Writer | Kôbô Abe
  • Producer | Tadashi Ono

STATUS: Released

This film is currently not available.   

When a miner leaves his employers and treks out with his young son to become a migrant worker, he finds himself moving from one eerie landscape to another, intermittently followed (and photographed) by an enigmatic man in a clean, white suit, and eventually coming face-to-face with his inescapable destiny. Hiroshi Teshigahara’s debut feature and first collaboration with novelist Kobo Abe, Pitfall is many things: a mysterious, unsettling ghost story, a portrait of human alienation, and a compellingly surreal critique of soulless industry, shot in elegant black and white.

Alienation Mystery Industry Surrealism Destiny
Film Organizations
The Criterion Collection
DISTRIBUTION