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Film Archive

Tetsuo: The Iron Man

The Wish To Be a Red Indian: Kafka and Cinema 2024 / Tetsuo / Japan 1989

Tetsuo: The Iron Man Tetsuo: The Iron Man

Synopsis

In an abandoned factory a young man with an insatiable fetish for metal objects inserts a piece of scrap metal into a self-inflicted wound on his thigh. When he staggers out into the street off his head, he is hit by a car. The driver, an office worker, wakes up the following morning and notices a metal hair growing out of his cheek. And that’s just the start of what turns out to be an unprecedented mutation process. Imagine a cyberpunk version of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis: shot on 16mm film, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, with its perverse sense of humour, is to this day one of the most extreme apocalyptic debuts in recent decades. 

Lorenzo Esposito

About the film

67 min / Black & white, DCP

Director Shinya Tsukamoto / Screenplay Shinya Tsukamoto / Dir. of Photography Shinya Tsukamoto, Kei Fujiwara / Music Chu Ishikawa / Editor Shinya Tsukamoto / Art Director Shinya Tsukamoto / Producer Shinya Tsukamoto / Production Kaijyu Theater / Cast Tomoroh Taguchi, Kei Fujiwara, Shinya Tsukamoto / Sales Nikkatsu Corporation

About the director

Shinya Tsukamoto

Shinya Tsukamoto (1960, Tokyo). Selected filmography: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Tetsuo, 1989), Tokyo Fist (1995), Bullet Ballet (1998), Gemini (Sōseiji, 1999), A Snake of June (Rokugatsu no hebi, 2002), Vital (2004), Nightmare Detective (Akumu Tantei, 2006), Kotoko (2011), Fires on the Plain (Nobi, 2015), Killing (Zan, 2018).

Contacts

Nikkatsu Corporation
3-28-12 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, 113 0033, Tokyo
Japan
Phone: +81 356 891 014
Fax: +81 356 891 042
E-mail: [email protected]

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