Nine films from Japan and abroad that explore the theme of capital punishment will be screened consecutively at a theater in Tokyo's Shibuya district over a one-week period starting Saturday, accompanied by a series of talks.
The movies to be shown at Eurospace for "Death Penalty Movie Week" include a screening of "Serial Killer," a 1969 documentary on Norio Nagayama, who was hanged in 1997 for fatally shooting four people when he was a teenager, and the 1958 French movie "Elevator to the Gallows." Movies from Bolivia, China and South Korea will also be shown.
The screenings, at a pace of three to four movies a day, will be accompanied by talk sessions with guest speakers, including Yoshihiro Yasuda, a Tokyo-based lawyer leading the campaign against the death penalty in Japan, and Shoji Sakurai, who was falsely accused in a high-profile 1967 murder case and acquitted more than 40 years later.