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The Naked Island

Original title: Hadaka no shima
1960 · 1 h 36 min
Directed by Kaneto Shindo

Cast

Nobuko Otowa Taiji Tonoyama

Credits

Written by: Kaneto Shindō
Cinematography: Kiyomi Kuroda
Music: Hikaru Hayashi
Editing: Toshio Enoki
Produced by: Eisaku Matsuura Kaneto Shindō

Plot

A couple live on a small island with no water supply. The film has no dialogue. It won the Grand Prize at Moscow in 1961.

Sinekatalog’s take

Kaneto Shindo's dialogue-free film watches a family farming a barren island, hauling water by boat. Beautiful, ritualistic and poignant, it is a pure, powerful study of labour and endurance.Sinekatalog’s own editorial review – not a user or critic quote.

Ratings

IMDb: 8.0 / 10 (6,908 votes)
IMDb rating and vote count from the IMDb ratings dataset (October 2026). Scores change over time.

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