Kôshikei

The 1968 Japanese film "Death by Hanging" (Kôshikei) is a drama that employs Brechtian techniques to explore themes of guilt and consciousness, justice, and the persecution of ethnic Koreans in Japan. A Korean man, known only as R, survives his execution but loses his memory, leading the officials who witnessed the hanging to debate how to proceed with his punishment. The film takes a highly theatricalized film-within-a-film structure, recreating R's crimes in absurd and perverse humor, before ultimately revealing the officials' own guilt-ridden pasts and R's refusal to accept his punishment, as he proclaims himself innocent and states that if he is executed, so are the officials themselves.