Film Forum

(1959) French actress Emmanuelle Riva (2012 Oscar nominee for Amour), in Japan to make a “peace film,” finds herself, in the course of her brief affair with Japanese architect Eiji Okada (Woman in the Dunes), compulsively returning to her own traumatic post-war experiences. Asked to do an anti-nuclear documentary, Resnais opted instead for a feature exploring mutual guilts and the power of memory, written by novelist Marguerite Duras. Winner of the International Critics’ Prize at Cannes, Hiroshima was kept out of the main competition to avoid offending the U.S. Riva died this past January at the age of 89 (see Melville’s Léon Morin, Priest, starring Riva and Jean-Paul Belmondo). DCP. Approx. 92 min.