Japanese Cult Director Shinya Tsukamoto Reveals Vietnam Vet Drama Mr. Nelson, Have You Killed People?’

Shinya Tsukamoto, a famous Japanese filmmaker best known for his body horror film Tetsuo: Iron Mancreated a Japanese release for his latest feature, Mr. Nelson, Have You Killed People?an English-language drama based on the true story of an American Vietnam War veteran turned peace activist with deep ties to Japan. The film is scheduled to open in Japanese cinemas in September, setting up a presentation at the Venice Film Festival.

The project marks a significant departure for Tsukamoto, who wrote, directed, shot and edited the film – his first English-language feature – in locations across the United States, Thailand, Vietnam and Japan. Broadway veteran Rodney Hicks, an original and closing member of Renttakes his first screen lead as Allen Nelson, while Oscar-, Emmy- and Tony-winner Geoffrey Rush plays Dr. Daniels, a Veterans Affairs physician who intervenes in Nelson’s downward spiral. Tatiana AliThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) plays Nelson’s wife, Linda, and teenager Mark Murphy appears in flashbacks as a young Nelson.

The film is based on the fictional account of Nelson, who grew up in New York and enlisted in the Marine Corps at the age of 18, seeking to escape poverty and discrimination. After training at Camp Hansen in Okinawa, he was sent to Vietnam in 1966, where he participated in raids on villages that targeted men, women and children as suspected Viet Cong. He returned home very depressed, and spent years homeless before receiving treatment through the VA. Nelson continued to devote his life to anti-war advocacy, returning to Okinawa in 1996 and eventually giving more than 1,200 lectures in schools and public halls across Japan. He died in 2009 and is buried in the country.

Mr. Nelson, Have You Killed People? completes what Tsukamoto has described as an informal trilogy of 20th-century war films. Fires on the Plain (2014), his adaptation of Shohei Ooka’s classic story about a Japanese soldier’s harrowing experience in the Philippines, competed in the main competition at the Venice Film Festival. Shadow of Fire (2023), set in the devastated black markets of Japan after World War II, premiered in the Orizzonti section of Venice, where it won the NETPAC Award. Where those films explored the Japanese experience of wartime atrocities and their aftermath, Mr. Nelson it shifts the lens to the American side – especially to what the filmmaker calls “the wounds of those who caused the war.”

Tsukamoto says the project began seven years ago, tracing its roots to his research Fires on the Plain.

“The scariest work of fiction I’ve come across is Mr. Nelson, Have You Killed People?” he says: “This book, in which he poured out his crimes and the life that followed without any defense, has been with me since then and is deeply embedded in my heart.”

He adds that Nelson’s story—”having spent a lifetime sharing his wartime experiences”—is more important now than ever, “in today’s world, where conflicts are raging in different places.”

The film is produced and distributed in Japan by the Kinoshita Group and its distribution arm Kino Films. The announcement was timed to coincide with National Vietnam Veterans Day on March 29.