Battle Royale

Japan at the start of the new millennium. The country is in a state of chaos, violence by rebellious teenagers in schools is completely out of control. The government hits back with a new law: every year a school class picked at random will be cast away on a desert island to fight it out among themselves. The rules are simple: it lasts three days, everyone gets water, food and a weapon and only one may survive. Then a school class on a school trip is kidnapped. When they wake up, a teacher (no one less than Kitano ‘Beat’ Takeshi) tells them that the collar around their necks monitors their position and can be caused to explode remotely at any moment.Veteran Fukasaku Kinji, eternally young and still just as provocative, has added a contemporary, controversial and violent epic to his oeuvre. As the catalogue to the festival in Tokyo concluded, his world of thoughtless violence is starting to look more and more like contemporary Japan, in these times of moral decay, aggressive youth and frightened adults.Fukasaku was immediately able to identify with the teenagers from the popular novel by Takami Koshun that formed the basis for the film. At the age of 15 he was confronted with the death of most of his classmates during a bombing raid. The emotions that evoked, the irrational hatred of the powers that had used such violence, have for him always been crucial – and certainly for this brutal variation on Survivor.