With United Red Army, Japanese New Wave legend Kôji Wakamatsu brings it all back home. Drawing not only on his experience as a film director – this is his 99th film – but also on his association with Japan’s radicalized student movement of the 1960’s, Wakamatsu here tells the story of the Asama-Sanso hostage drama, which riveted Japan for ten days in 1972, and remains as evocative there as the words “Patty Hearst” or “Munich ‘72” are in the west. The Asama-Sanso incident brought a bloody end to not just a small group of radical extremists, but also to the idealism of the 1960’s, as the romance of rebellion gave way to the darker sides of human nature, from Altamont to the Japanese mountainside.

Wakamatsu was close enough to the infamous United Red Army for him to be denied a US visa to this day. Here, he mixes archival footage with dramatic reenactments of historical events, drawing the noose ever tighter around his protagonists, while maintaining a surgeon’s precise detachment throughout. A truly chilling masterpiece - one people lived for and died for.

Sindre Kartvedt