"THE PIRATES OF BUBUAN is masterful, a film in which Imamura whisks an entire world out of nothing...In 46 minutes we're given an entire societal microcosm with all its maddening contradictions."—Sight & Sound

"In ballsy, proto-Nick Broomfield fashion, Shohei Imamura puts himself directly in the line of danger to film THE PIRATES OF BUBUAN, a startling documentary glimpse of shady activity on the Phillipine high seas in the early 1970s. As an unintended side effect of bringing a camera crew into relatively unknown territory, Imamura also captures the experiences of native islanders eking out their day-to-day lives on both the poverty line and the idyllic shoreline."—The Cinefamily