Rikugun Nakano gakkó

What propels young men willingly to shed their identities for an uncertain objective? How far can men go to safeguard their vocation? Can morality realistically have a place in wartime? Masumura poses a myriad of thorny questions in this sober spy drama, stripping the genre of all its glamour and focusing on the cunning institutionalization of men too proud and too self-delusional to confront the legitimacy of their work. Set during the Sino-Japanese War of 1937, Raizô Ichikawa is Jiro, an idealistic young man who finds himself recruited in Japan’s first military intelligence school. Faced with stern ethical choices, Jiro is prompted to decide what kind of man he envisions himself to be. (Karlovy Vary International Film Festival)