The Red Spectacles(Jigoku no banken: akai megane)

Oshii Mamoru made his live-action directorial debut with this sci-fi oddity, the first film of his long-running Kerberos Saga (which would later include his iconic Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade). Set in an alternate universe where Japan is under fascist rule, the film follows a former member of an elite crime-fighting tactical unit who returns to Tokyo years after his unit was violently disbanded. However, he finds a decayed city with little traces of the world he once knew. While its sepia-tinged black-and-white look implies an homage to classic neonoir, Oshii’s genre-bending fever dream features jarring tonal shifts that see a bleak story clashing with broad absurdist slapstick humour, suggesting that perhaps absurdity is the only way to make sense of life under oppression.