A Man Vanishes Trailer (1967)

Trailer for the faux documentary A Man Vanishes.

In the 1960s, Tadishi Oshima, a Japanese businessman, goes missing. Or did he choose to disappear? Either way, his fiancée, Yoshie, who is desperate to find him, leads a filmmaking team on a trail to his whereabouts. Together, they set off interviewing his associates, neighbors, and even past loves. An odd set of circumstances slowly comes into focus: Had Tadishi embezzled funds? Could it be that his relationship with Yoshie’s sister was not what it seemed? As the testimonies deepen, Yoshie’s role in constructing the narrative of Tadishi’s disappearance comes into question. Even the filmmaker’s role is subject to speculation. Shot in black-and-white, with purposefully out-of-sync sound, this examination of truth and fiction may have taken over forty-five years to be released in the United States, but the questions at its core are remarkably current.