Red Angel

One of Japan’s most notorious and internationally criminally under-exposed films. Shocking, beautiful and moving in equal measure, this is one of Masumura’s very finest achievements. Set against the Sino-Japanese war in 1939, a young angelic military nurse is raped by her patients and sent to the front line for daring to register a complaint. Posted to a rag-tag demoralised unit, she falls in love with an impotent morphine-addicted surgeon. Together the pair seek solace in each other, as all around, disease, brutality and carnage threaten to sweep their humanity away. (Independent Cinema Office)