Devils on the Doorstep

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Jiang Wen's Devils on the Doorstep is a dark, satirical epic set during the final days of the Japanese occupation of China during World War II.

Japanese soldier and his Chinese translator are left in a village with orders for the peasants to guard them. The soldier begs for an honorable death, the translator for life, and the villagers simply want to be rid of their crazed captives.

Village Voice called Jiang Wen's award-winning film "a bitter absurdity-of-war fiction-the sort Heller and Vonnegut crystallized in the '60s." (140 mins.)