The Naked Island

The Naked Island is a 1960 Japanese film directed by Kaneto Shindo, whose film Onibaba is one I've seen and enjoyed several times. He died in May of 2012 at the age of 100, completing his last film as writer/director in 2010.

This film stars Nobuko Otowa (The Tale of Genji, Onibaba, Kuroneko) and Taiji Tonoyama (The Tale of Genji, Onibaba, Kuroneko). It is the story of a man and woman and their two children eeking out a bare existence as the only inhabitants of an island. They farm, but there's no water source on the island, so they must transport water to their island in a row boat several times each day. It is a genuinely moving film and hard for me to watch in places.

FilmRef.com says,

Kaneto Shindo creates a visually distilled, minimalist, and understated, yet compelling and profoundly expressive portrait of human struggle, perseverance, and survival in Naked Island.

It doesn't have a critics score at Rotten Tomatoes, but the audience rating is 86%.