Woman in the Dunes (1964)

It’s one of the great films of its era, and definitely the most widely seen of the Japanese New Wave era (along perhaps with something like Tokyo Drifter or Funeral Parade of Roses). However, there’s a whole host of other mesmerising Japanese films from the same period I’d highly recommend checking out - anything by Shohei Imamura (Profound Desire of the Gods is a good starting point), or the likes of Eros + Massacre or The Naked Island. They’re often quite radical in their form, and deal with sex, politics and violence in still challenging ways.

It’s a vast rabbit hole to be explored, only really limited by the lack of availability of many of the films (although both Arrow and Masters of Cinema have done sterling work with high quality releases of at least some of the major and lesser known films of the era).