Caniba

Name: Caniba
Genre: Documentary
Released: October 19, 2018
Duration: 92 min
Rating: 61
Cast: Issei Sagawa, Jun Sagawa

2018

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Generally favorable reviews based on 9 Critic Reviews

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Caniba (US Trailer 1)

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Movie Details & Credits

Grasshopper Film | Release Date: October 19, 2018 | NR

Starring: Issei Sagawa, Jun Sagawa

Summary: Caniba reflects on the discomfiting significance of cannibalistic desire in human existence through the prism of one Japanese man, Issei Sagawa, and his mysterious relationship with his brother, Jun Sagawa. As a 32-year-old student at the Sorbonne in Paris, Issei Sagawa was arrested on June 13, 1981 when spotted emptying two bloodyCaniba reflects on the discomfiting significance of cannibalistic desire in human existence through the prism of one Japanese man, Issei Sagawa, and his mysterious relationship with his brother, Jun Sagawa. As a 32-year-old student at the Sorbonne in Paris, Issei Sagawa was arrested on June 13, 1981 when spotted emptying two bloody suitcases containing the remains of his Dutch classmate, Renée Hartevelt. Two days earlier, Mr. Sagawa had killed Hartevelt and began eating her. Declared legally insane, he returned to Japan. He has been a free man ever since. Ostracized from society, he has made his living off his crime by writing novels, drawing manga, appearing in innumerable documentaries and sexploitation films in which he reenacts his crime, and even becoming a food critic. [Grasshoper Film]… Expand

Director: Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel

Genre(s): Documentary

Rating: NR

Runtime: 92 min

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Critic Reviews

100

Christopher Machell

Oct 18, 2018

Caniba offers no trite explanations or condemnations of Sagawa. Instead, we are offered a small window into his reality. Read full review

Boyd van Hoeij

Oct 18, 2018

Rather than sensationalizing their subject, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor never forget that Issei, while clearly troubled or ill or both, is still a human being, too. It is a testament to the talent of the directors, who also shot and edited the film, that such a complex moral stance rises organically from their material. Read full review

Peter Goldberg

Oct 15, 2018

Throughout Caniba, there’s a singularly disquieting relationship between the filmmakers’ formal experimentation and their subject. Read full review

IndieWire Michael Nordine

Oct 18, 2018

Sagawa is disturbed and alienated, but that doesn’t make him a compelling documentary subject in and of itself. Maybe that’s the point: Demystifying Sigawa takes away some of the near-mythic power that’s been attributed to him over the years. Read full review

A.A. Dowd

Oct 22, 2018

Certainly, viewers may feel a kind of seasickness, their stomachs doing somersaults during this supremely discomfiting movie. Read full review

The Film Stage Ethan Vestby

Oct 18, 2018

As disturbing as the film can be, at the end of the day one doesn’t really take much away from it. Read full review

Glenn Kenny

Oct 18, 2018

The filmmakers, who made “Leviathan,” the striking 2012 immersion into commercial fishing, seem to be arguing that Sagawa needs to be understood beyond moralistic preconceptions. Caniba did not make the case for me. I consider Sagawa repellent, and the movie an exercise in intellectualized scab-picking. Read full review

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