Synopsis  (Country : Japan)

Ikinai

101 mins/1998

End of 1997, Okinawa. Aragaki, the conductor of a three-day New Year bus tour, is waiting for Yashiro, the other passengers having already boarded. Mitsuki says she has come in place of her uncle. The tour begins. What she does not know is that this is a very special tour. Everyone on board is in debt and has joined in a suicide pact with Aragaki in order that their families can later collect life insurance money, pay off their dues, and still have a bit to live on.

As the bus rolls on, the passengers get to know each other: curious and talkative Ito, teacher Kimura, who ruined himself over a woman, Kanda whose child is fatally ill, Nose, leader of a religious cult, among others... By nightfall, the passengers have developed a strange friendship. Aragaki scolds them and Kimuri blurts out the truth: it is their last night on earth! Mitsuki who finally learns the truth, is drugged by Aragaki but, seeing her lying before them like one dead, the passengers begin to have second thoughts…

Credits:-
Directed by Hiroshi Shimizu

Cast:
Dankan (Aragaki), Yoichi Nukumizu (Yashiro), Nanako Okouchi (Mitsuki),

Takenori Murano (Ito), Toshinori Omi (Kimura), Ichiro Ogura (Kanda), Taro Ishida (Noguchi), Ippei Souda (Ozawa)

Born in Kyoto in 1964. Hiroshi Shimizu graduated from the Yokohama Film School (the present Japan Film School) and joined the film industry as a free lance assistant director, working with directors like Yusaku Matsuda, Eiichi Kudo and Takeshi Kitano. Ikinai is his first feature film as a director.