The New God

Still underrated among filmmakers working today, Tsuchiya Yutaka exploded onto the global documentary scene with this interrogation of his own relationship to a far-right hardcore punk band called Revolutionary Truth. Comparable to confessional documentary portraits like those of Michael Moore and Kazuo Hara, the film is a dogged attempt to understand Japanese youth culture and its discontents towards the end of the big capitalist 20th century. Nerve-wracking, frequently hilarious, and ultimately moving, the film resonates today in its depiction of fascism as a cool kid’s mistaken alternative to performative leftism—or, in the words of one punk onscreen, being a “nerd.”