1952 Japanese drama film by Akira Kurosawa
Ikiru (生きる; 'To Live') is a 1952 Japanese drama film directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay co-written with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni. The film examines the struggles of a terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat (played by Takashi Shimura) and his final quest for meaning. The screenplay was partly inspired by Leo Tolstoy's 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
The film's major themes include learning how to live, the inefficiency of bureaucracy, and decaying family life in Japan, which have been the subject of analysis by academics and critics. It won awards for Best Film at the Kinema Junpo and Mainichi Film Awards and is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time. Ikiru is regarded by some as Kurosawa's masterpiece alongside Seven Samurai.
Plot summary adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.