- Focus
by Andrea Zennaro
Wound and Guilt: Shinya Tsukamoto Brings His War Trilogy to a Close in Venice
Allen Nelson (Rodney Hicks), an African American raised amid poverty and discrimination, enlists in the Marines at eighteen and is sent to Vietnam in 1966, where he learns to kill without hesitation. Returning to the United States with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, he loses his family, job and home. His encounter with psychiatrist Neil Daniels (Geoffrey Rush) offers him a chance to heal. Drawing on Nelson’s autobiographical account, Tsukamoto approaches war from the perspective of those who carry its guilt and wounds.
Director, screenwriter, actor, editor and cinematographer Shinya Tsukamoto (Tokyo, 1960) is one of the most radical voices in Japanese independent cinema. Since Tetsuo (1989), he has explored bodies, violence and alienation with an unmistakable physical energy. His bond with Venice runs deep: A Snake of June (2002) won the Jury Prize in the Controcorrente section. He returned in 2004 with Vital and in 2009 with The Bullet Man, the third chapter of the Tetsuo trilogy. Kotoko (2011) won the Orizzonti Award; Fires on the Plain (2014) and Killing (2018) screened in Competition, while Shadow of Fire (2023) was presented in Orizzonti. He served on the Competition jury in 1997 and 2019, and on the Orizzonti jury in 2005.
