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Amidst the turmoil of World War II, British Major Jack Celliers (David Bowie) surrenders to the Japanese Army, becoming a prisoner of war at a camp governed by the strict yet sentimental Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto). There, Colonel John Lawrence (Tom Conti), knowledgeable in Japanese culture and language, frequently clashes with Sergeant Hara (Takeshi Kitano), a brutish Japanese officer ignorant of the Geneva Convention. Both witness Captain Yonoi’s growing obsession with Major Celliers, blurring the adversarial line between captor and prisoner.

Japanese director Nagisa Ōshima cast David Bowie after seeing him in a Broadway production of The Elephant Man, recognising "an inner spirit that is indestructible”—a quality Bowie embodies in his portrayal of Jack Celliers. Deliberately upending the genre conventions of war films, Ōshima criticises the Japanese army’s moral code and introduces a queer subtext in this examination of the human spirit and what it takes to resist the brutalities of war.

M | Moderate themes and violence