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A Man Vanishes

Play trailer A Man Vanishes 1967 2h 10m Documentary Play Trailer Watchlist
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100% Tomatometer 8 Reviews 81% Popcornmeter 250+ Ratings
A film director searches for answers to a salesman's disappearance.

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A Man Vanishes

Critics Reviews

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Ronnie Scheib Variety 11/19/2012
The explosively provocative film progressively and aggressively blurs distinctions between documentary and fiction. Go to Full Review
Farran Smith Nehme New York Post 11/16/2012
3/4
A part-fact, part-fiction narrative that challenges the very notion of whether true documentary can even exist. Go to Full Review
Manohla Dargis New York Times 11/14/2012
4/5
Seemingly banal in its conceit, wildly startling in its execution, it tracks a film crew that, like a detective squad, investigates what became of an ordinary man. Go to Full Review
Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews 12/28/2012
B
Messy experimental pic that starts out as a documentary but changes to fiction. Go to Full Review
Eric Monder Film Journal International 11/15/2012
Even for those who have seen the kind of productions since inspired by this daring experiment, A Man Vanishes should not be missed-or forgotten. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Thom N Dec 19 As I'm sure the filmmakers intended in crafting this, I had no idea whether this was a documentary or a work of fiction, or some combination of the two. For a movie who's entire premise is made clear within the first 40 seconds, I found myself still very engaged for the entire run time of the movie. Worth a watch, though probably not super easy to get your hands on. See more 06/07/2017 One of Imamuru's earlier films, A Man Vanishes is fascinating in its first hour, loses its viewer in the next 45 minutes, and grips him again in the last 23 with its bitingly satiric representation of the media. See more 03/30/2014 This is an intriguing experiment exploring the nature of truth in documentary that loses its way towards the end. See more 06/28/2012 It starts as a documentary about a search for a missing person, who vanished 2 years ago, and the filmmaker's search for answers. During the search, the ex-fiancee of the man in search becomes obsessed with the camera and being in front of it, actors are brought in for recreation, hidden audio recordings and surveillance filmmaking become a morality question of privacy. But do we ever get an answer to what happened? Definitely not, but the process becomes a question of how much manipulation can be done with the involvement of media and cameras. See more 04/06/2012 a pretty fascinating experimental film that starts as a documentary and becomes something else. imamura sets out to investigate one of the thousands of missing persons cases that occur in japan each year by interviewing friends, family and co-workers. i can't help having a suspicion he got a bit bored when this line of inquiry seemed to lead nowhere and wanted to inject some drama into the film, leading to something much more interesting... See more 11/03/2007 I loved how this documentary changed over the its course to whatever the people in it wanted it to be. In search for truth in a documentary may lead away from it. Or so says Imamura. 'Are we shooting fiction or documentary?' So asks the one of the crew members. See more Read all reviews
A Man Vanishes

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Movie Info

Synopsis A film director searches for answers to a salesman's disappearance.
Director
Shôhei Imamura
Producer
Shôhei Imamura
Production Co
Art Theatre Guild, Imamura Productions
Genre
Documentary
Original Language
Japanese
Release Date (Streaming)
Sep 5, 2017
Runtime
2h 10m
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