Ikinai

Ikinai is a 1998 Japanese comedy drama film directed by debutant Hiroshi Shimizu and starring Dankan and Nanako Okouchi.
The film is about a group of bus passengers on a trip in Okinawa who want to commit suicide so that their families will receive their life insurances payouts despite their own financial issues.
The film won awards at the Locarno Film Festival and at the Busan International Film Festival.

Premise

Mitsuki, a young woman, receives from her uncle a bus ticket for a tour on the island of Okinawa. She joins the group and the trip. However all the other passengers have planned it only in order to kill themselves.

Cast

Production

The film is Shimizu's directorial debut; he had been so far a long-time collaborator of Takeshi Kitano.

Themes and influences

This film was found to offer an approach of the sensitive topic of suicide through humor and compassion.

Reception

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that "Hiroshi Shimizu is a debutant director, a former assistant to Takeshi Kitano, and his Ikinai is an unexpectedly moving essay on the nature of death" and that the film was "A very unsettling picture, arrestingly original, and possessed of a distinctive, seriocomic tone" Derek Elley of Variety wrote: "Neat idea of a dozen Japanese who hire a tour bus with the express purpose of committing communal suicide partly succeeds as a stylized, existential road movie, but an underdeveloped script leaves the viewer with too much time to ponder the story’s loose ends instead of being engrossed in the characters and ambience". Time Out found the film "fascinating".

Remakes

The film was remade unofficially in India twice: in Telugu as Mee Sreyobhilashi and in Kannada as Lift Kodla.