Battle Royale: Director's Cut

The wild and violent Japanese cult film that inspired the making of The Hunger Games series.

On Jimmy Kimmel Live!, earlier this year, Quentin Tarantino revealed his secret dream of directing Battle Royale long before The Hunger Games franchise snapped the western version of the original concept. To all you Hunger Games fans, know that the origin of one of the largest franchises in the western movie hemisphere came from Japan.

A class of junior high students is «kidnapped» by the authorities to participate in the annual Battle Royale Event. An extreme programme the authorities have developed to discourage youngsters from becoming criminals. 42 kids are sent off to a remote island; Given food, water, and a special weapon and are told that if they are to survive, they have to kill all the other students. Around their neck they have an explosive necklace, giving them three days to finish their mission. Their teacher (brilliantly played by Beat Takeshi Kitano) is overseeing it all, making sure it gets as nasty and bloody as possible.

We have the glorious pleasure of presenting the new 4K restoration of the original hit at this year’s edition of Films from the South. As a millennium dystopia it is in line with brutal provocations like Lord of the Flies and A Clockwork Orange, and the film is truly director Kinji Fukasaku’s great masterpiece.

Lasse Skagen

The screening on November 19th is done in collaboration with the Cinematheque in Oslo.

To make this «Royale evening» even more crazy, we also recommend the new hilarious Japanese action comedy Office Royale, giving office-ladies a splendid opportunity to punch in a lot of faces whenever needed.

Director

Kinji Fukasaku was a Japanese director and screenwriter born in 1930 and died in 2003, the same year as a sequel to his masterpiece Battle Royale came out. He is credited with 68 film titles and TV series, and received a long line of awards for his films and his lifelong work in the Japanese film industry.

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