Who has the authority to tell the story of a crime? A.K.A. Serial Killer approaches this question by turning away from sensationalism and towards the images, testimonies, and narratives through which violence gets remembered. With that premise in mind, the film examines the machinery that transforms perpetrators into public figures while often obscuring the life of the victims.

Moving between archival materials, interviews, and careful reflections on media representation, Masao Adachi’s classic 1969 film tells a larger story about how societies consume violence. The film repeatedly asks what remains outside the frame, and whose perspectives disappear when crimes are retold through familiar narrative conventions. All of this is framed in what has now considered a prime example of landscape cinema.

Positioned between investigative documentary and essay film, A.K.A. Serial Killer is ultimately not really interested in solving a crime. What it does do is examine the forms through which crimes are mediated. It challenges us to reconsider the figure of the serial killer through our own position as spectator. Looking, remembering and narrating are never neutral. At their worst, they are complicit.

TW