Black Ox

A farmer descends from a mountain in this Zen Buddhist meditation on the modernisation of Japan that boasts stunning celluloid imagery.

During the Meiji Restoration of 19th-century Japan, an unnamed rural farmer (Lee Kang-sheng, Stranger Eyes, MIFF 2025) tills the land with his ox, keeping with the traditional farming methods of his isolated mountain community. But when his ox wanders off, he must venture down to a very different world below and encounter the social forces shaping his changing nation.

The first feature-length film in over a decade for slow-cinema maestro Tetsuichirô Tsuta is, like his previous picture, 2013’s The Tale of Iya, shot in the area of rural Japan in which he grew up. Like Tsai Ming-liang (The Wayward Cloud, MIFF 2005) – whose recurring leading man Lee is front and centre here – Tsuta crafts an explicitly Buddhist take on cinema, drawing inspiration from Ten Ox Herding Pictures: a 12th-century Zen series of drawings and accompanying poems. Set to one of the last soundtracks legendary musician Ryuichi Sakamoto composed before his death, Black Ox is shot in a mix of black-and-white 35mm and colour 70mm (the first Japanese film to ever make use of this high-resolution film stock), its vivid imagery and largely wordless sequences creating a meditative cinematic tale with the elemental power of myth.

“The movie is truly majestic. The cinematography of Yutaka Aoki captures the various settings the protagonist roams in in exquisite fashion … an audiovisual extravaganza.” – Asian Movie Pulse