Woman in the Dunes

Woman in the Dunes
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Hiroshi Teshigahara
Screenplay by	Kōbō Abe[1]
Based on	The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe
Produced by	Kiichi Ichikawa Tadashi Ono[1]
Starring	Eiji Okada Kyōko Kishida Kōji Mitsui
Cinematography	Hiroshi Segawa[1]
Edited by	Fusako Shuzui[1]
Music by	Toru Takemitsu[1]
Production company	Teshigahara Production[1]
Distributed by	Toho
Release date	February 15, 1964 (1964-2-15) (Japan)
Running time	146 minutes[1]
Country	Japan[1]
Language	Japanese

Woman in the Dunes or Woman of the Dunes (Japanese: 砂の女, Hepburn: Suna no Onna, "Sand Woman") is a 1964 Japanese New Wave avant-garde psychological thriller film directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara and starring Eiji Okada, Kyōko Kishida, and Kōji Mitsui. It received widespread critical acclaim and was nominated for two Academy Awards. The screenplay for the film was adapted by Kōbō Abe from his 1962 novel of the same name.^[1] The film follows an amateur entomologist (Okada) who is led to settle in the house of a lonely widow (Kishida) at the bottom of a sand dune in a rural coastal village. He soon realizes that the villagers have trapped him there and expect him to work for them.

Woman in the Dunes was an independent, joint production of Teshigahara Productions and the Japanese Art Theater Guild, a group of young film- makers involved in an attempt to create political-aesthetical films in opposition to the dominant studio productions of the 1960s, which they viewed as commercial, unartistic, and uninteresting^[2]

The film is considered to be Teshigahara's masterpiece, and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time. ^[3]