In Venice Competition Film ‘Mr Nelson, Did You Kill People?’ Director Tsukamoto Shinya Asks Vital Questions
The film adapts Allen Nelson’s autobiography and traces a Vietnam veteran’s reckoning with violence, a project Tsukamoto says capped a decade of work.
- Filmmaker Tsukamoto Shinya is premiering Did You Kill People in Venice's competition, documenting Vietnam veteran Allen Nelson as he confronts how war upended his life working with a counsellor.
- Born 15 years after World War II, Tsukamoto grew up believing the world was peaceful, unaware of war's lingering effects on others. Beginning with Fires on the Plain in 2014, he shifted from genre films to interrogating real-world violence.
- The film adapts Nelson's autobiography, discovered during Tsukamoto's research for Fires. Nelson is well-known in Japan, where he delivered more than 1,200 talks about his war experiences, writing with extraordinary honesty about violence he inflicted.
- Throughout production, Tsukamoto employed zero objective camera angles and praised lead actor Rodney's precise performance, whose powerful physicality served as a sensitive antenna reaching toward Nelson's spirit. The film culminates Tsukamoto's decade-long investigation into violence.
- Tsukamoto remains deeply concerned about the state of the world today, worrying that Japan may overreact to global events and move closer toward war. This anxiety has shaped his artistic focus over the past decade.
13 Articles
13 Articles
‘Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?’ Review: A Vietnam Vet Reckons with PTSD in a Heavy-Handed Trauma Drama
Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto adapts the nonfiction account of former U.S. Marine Allen Nelson, who spoke about the brutalities he committed on the front and hardships he faced back home.
‘Mr. Nelson, Did You Kill People?’ Review: Shinya Tsukamoto Directs a Bizarre Misfire About a Black Soldier in Vietnam
Venice: Stilted dialogue, oppressive sound design, and a gawking cultural gaze yield one of the most unpleasant films of this year’s competition.
What about the trauma of ex-marines prominent in Vietnam who were disproportionately violent even with the civilian population of the Asian country? This view, alien to Hollywood films about American heroes and patriots, is introduced in the Venice Mostra by a filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto, a great figure of underground and Japanese cult cinema (the author of Thesuo: The Iron Man, 1989) who, without speaking a word of English, has shot Mr. Nelson, …
In Venice Competition Film ‘Mr Nelson, Did You Kill People?’ Director Tsukamoto Shinya Asks Vital Questions
Independent filmmaker Tsukamoto Shinya was born 15 years after the end of World War II. “Neither my parents nor my grandparents ever spoke about the war, so I grew up believing, without question, that the world was a bright and peaceful place,” says Tsukamoto. “But beneath the surface, many people were suffering from the dark […]
"Nelson, Did You Kill Someone?" is the latest film from the brilliant director Shinya Tsukamoto and has been selected for the competition section of the Venice International Film Festival. Starring Rodney Hicks and Geoffrey Rush, it has been showing at Kino Cinema Shinjuku and other theaters since September 11th.
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