Directed by Kinuyo Tanaka

Kinuyo Tanaka was already one of Japan’s greatest actors—celebrated for her collaborations with auteurs like Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and Mikio Naruse—when she took an unprecedented risk by embarking on a directing career in a studio system that actively discouraged female filmmakers. The six features she made over the course of a decade center on women characters who refuse to conform to restrictive social roles as they seek independence and individual agency. With compassion and insight, Tanaka critiques the social conditions and forces that shape her heroines’ struggles: sex work and social shaming (LOVE LETTER), the reduction of a woman to passive romantic partner (THE MOON HAS RISEN), taboos surrounding mortality and the female body (FOREVER A WOMAN), colonial politics (THE WANDERING PRINCESS), the rehabilitation of “fallen women” (GIRLS OF THE NIGHT), and religious persecution and forbidden love (LOVE UNDER THE CRUCIFIX).