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Ikiru (PG)

• Consumer Advice: Contains terminal illness theme, mild sex references and threa
• Run time: 2 hours 23 mins

• Language: Japanese
• Genre: Drama
• Release date: 18th July 2008
• Original release date: 1st January 1958

• Starring: Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Kyôko Seki
• Directed by: Akira Kurosawa

• Official Website: http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_southbank/film_programme/july_seasons/japanese_gems/ikiru
• Distributor: BFI (UK Wide

Plot Synopsis

Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru is the modern-day tale of a lonely man confronting death in post-war Tokyo.

One of the greatest actors of Japanese cinema, Takashi Shimura, plays Kanji Watanabe, a middle-aged civil servant who has slavishly devoted himself to his job for thirty years, only to find that he now has inoperable stomach cancer. With limited time left, and the feeling that he has never truly lived at all, Watanabe embarks on a quest to make the most of his remaining days. After bouts of self-pity, a spell of hedonism and a doomed attempt at a platonic relationship, he commits himself doggedly to the task of converting a city dump into a children's playground. Tough-minded and unsentimental throughout, this is one of Kurosawa's finest films and also offers a vivid and satirical portrait of post-war Tokyo.