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Ikiru poster

MOVIE · 1952

Ikiru

Drama143 min

Kanji Watanabe has spent decades behind a desk in a Tokyo office, a middle-aged bureaucrat whose life of paperwork and routine is upended when he learns he has cancer. Takashi Shimura is Watanabe, moving through bars, workplaces, and uneasy new routines as he searches for some trace of meaning outside the system that has defined him. Akira Kurosawa keeps the focus on everyday rituals and small civic frustrations, turning one man’s crisis into a portrait of loneliness, public duty, and a life suddenly measured against time.

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Catalogue checked October 30, 2026. Use ReelRecs with an assistant