The Criterion Collection Complete

HARA, Kazuo (Japan) Sennan Asbestos Disaster [2016] Eclipse Series 49 Blu-ray Made over the course of ten years, this epic work of activist cinema joins the citizens of Sennan, Osaka, as they embark on an uphill legal battle to receive reparations from the government for exposing them to the deadly toxins of the city’s asbestos factories. Through wrenching interviews with the victims, Sennan Asbestos Disaster paints a damning portrait of how decades of negligence exacted a devastating toll while revealing how the tragedy is deeply entwined with issues of class and anti-Korean discrimination. This galvanizing look at the power of collective action depicts what happens when ordinary people go up against an unfeeling, maddeningly slow bureaucracy in their unceasing fight for justice. 214 minutes Color Monaural in Japanese 1:78:1 aspect ratio Criterion Release 2026 Director Kazuo Hara  was 71 when he directed Sennan Asbestos Disaster . Other Hara films in the Collec...

HARA, Kazuo (Japan) A Dedicated Life [1994] Eclipse Series 49 Blu-ray Kazuo Hara’s interest in iconoclastic figures living in opposition to mainstream society led him to work on A Dedicated Life, a fly-on-the-wall portrait of the controversial novelist Mitsuharu Inoue, a sometimes charming, sometimes combative, often frustrating literary lion of postwar Japan. The project, however, soon spins off into unexpected directions, first when Inoue is diagnosed with terminal cancer, then when Hara discovers that the writer’s fictions extend to the fabricated details of his own life. As the ailing author confronts his mortality, Hara begins trying to separate the man from the myth, resulting in a layered portrait of a complex figure whose life was an extension of his art. 157 minutes Color/Black and White Monaural in Japanese 1:55:1 aspect ratio Criterion Release 2026 Director Kazuo Hara  was 49 when he directed A Dedicated Life . Other Hara films in the Collection: Ecli...

HARA, Kazuo (Japan) The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On [1987] Eclipse Series 49 Blu-ray Kazuo Hara’s most renowned film is a harrowing confrontation with one of Japanese history’s darkest chapters. His unforgettable subject and collaborator in The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On is Kenzo Okuzaki—a former soldier, convicted murderer, and defiantly antiestablishment agitator—who has made it his life’s mission to expose the crimes committed by Japanese officers against their own men in New Guinea during World War II. As Okuzaki resorts to extreme measures in his crusade to find out the truth, what emerges is at once a shocking piece of investigative journalism, a courageous condemnation of militarism, and a riveting portrait of a single-minded man driven by a raw fury bordering on madness. 121 minutes Color Monaural in Japanese 1:55:1 aspect ratio Criterion Release 2026 Director Kazuo Hara  was 42 when he directed The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On . Other Ha...

HARA, Kazuo (Japan) Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 [1974] Eclipse Series 49 Blu-ray When his first wife, the outspoken feminist Miyuki Takeda, announced that she was leaving him in order to find herself, Kazuo Hara began this radical documentary as a way both to maintain their complex relationship and to make sense of it. Assisted by his new partner, Sachiko Kobayashi, Hara is granted shockingly intimate access to Takeda’s wayward journey toward liberation, as she explores her sexuality, becomes a single mother, and grows increasingly disenchanted with traditional social structures. As complicated and uncompromising as Takeda herself, Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 explodes the boundaries between subject and filmmaker to portray a woman willing to risk everything to live on her own terms. 93 minutes Black and White Monaural in Japanese 1:33:1 aspect ratio Criterion Release 2026 Director Kazuo Hara  was 29 when he directed Extreme Private Eros: Love S...

HARA, Kazuo (Japan) Goodbye CP [1972] Eclipse Series 49 Blu-ray An early documentary to portray the experiences of disabled people with compassion and complexity, Kazuo Hara’s searing debut is also one of the most unflinching films ever made about what it means to be an outsider. Produced in collaboration with the Green Lawn—a group of activists with cerebral palsy— Goodbye CP blends shot-on-the-fly footage of the members’ seemingly Sisyphean struggle to take their message to the streets with raw, sometimes confrontational interviews in which they reveal the torment of living in a society cruelly indifferent to their existence. In making his subjects active participants in the film—a practice he would continue—Hara powerfully asserts the humanity and agency of those who have long been denied both. 83 minutes Black and White Monaural in Japanese 1:33:1 aspect ratio Criterion Release 2026 Directors/Writer Kazuo Hara  was 27 when he wrote and directed Goodbye CP . O...

KOPPLE, Barbara (United States) American Dream [1990] Spine #1324 4K Winner of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, Barbara Kopple’s American Dream details the tumultuous 1985–86 labor strike against Hormel Foods in Austin, Minnesota. Fed up with dangerous plant conditions and drastic wage cuts, Austin’s Local P-9 went against the advice of its parent union and, aided by an activist campaign to damage the meatpacking giant’s reputation, conducted a nearly yearlong walkout. But as the strike dragged on, some workers found themselves desperate enough to cross the picket line, dividing a community already roiled by blockades, riots, and the intervention of the National Guard. Following up her landmark documentary Harlan County USA with another uncompromising report from the trenches of working-class America, Kopple captures the human and political costs of one of the most significant setbacks to organized labor amid the unchecked corporatism of the Reagan era. 98 minutes Monaural Color ...

GRAY, James (United States) Little Odessa [1994] Spine #1323 4K A Dostoevskian family tragedy in the form of a gangster drama, the darkly elegant debut feature by James Gray heralded the arrival of a singular voice in contemporary American cinema. Cloaked in the shadows of New York’s underworld, Little Odessa follows Joshua (Tim Roth), a volatile hit man whose latest assignment takes him back to the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up. After his return home, his criminal life collides with the grim domestic world of his abusive father (Maximilian Schell), ailing mother (Vanessa Redgrave), and loyal teenage brother (Edward Furlong). Channeling the brooding fatalism of classic noir, Gray—who won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion at just twenty-five—composes a haunting reflection on violence that begins at home and ripples ever outward. 98 minutes 2.0 Surround Color 2:39:1 Criterion Release 2026 Director/Writer James Gray  was 25 when he wrote and directed Little Odessa . Th...