The only Japanese director to twice win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Shohei Imamura has been described by The New York Times as "one of the most significant Japanese filmmakers of the postwar generation."
Imamura began his career as an assistant to legendary director Yasujiro Ozu, but, like his colleagues in the New Wave Nagisa Oshima and Masahiro Shinoda, came to reject the restraint and refinement that characterized the masters of the Japanese studio system, saying "I like to make messy films".
He directed his first feature, Stolen Desire (Nusumareta Yokujô), in 1958 for Nikkatsu, one of the country's largest studios, for whom he would produce seven more films, including Pigs and Battleships (Buta to Gunkan) (1961), and The Insect Woman (Nippon Konchuki) (1963).