Japan is ageing faster than any other country in the world, with almost 40% of its population over 60. With an exceptionally low birth rate, that figure is expected to continue to increase as the population shrinks. Whilst Japan once placed its elderly at the top of the social hierarchy, that is no longer the case, with the country’s prime minister recently stating that the ageing population poses an “urgent risk to society”.

Against this backcloth, director Chie Hayakawa imagines the introduction of a state-sponsored government programme, ‘Plan 75’, which encourages senior citizens to be voluntarily euthanised in order to rejuvenate a disproportionately aged society. The scheme is sold on the basis that, instead of being a burden on their family or the state or being lonely and isolated in their final years, anyone aged 75 or more can simply place themselves in the hands of the state and painlessly slip away.

The film focuses on the impact the scheme, with its bureaucratic machinery and deceptively soothing public-information films, has on a small group of people across society – an elderly woman who loses the means to live independently, a pragmatic ‘Plan 75’ salesman and a young Filipino caregiver.

https://www.richmondfilmsoc.org.uk/

– Rating: 15

– Directed by: Chie Hayakawa

– Written By: Jason Gray, Chie Hayakawa

– Runtime: 112 minutes

Tickets:

Adults: £5

Full time students: £3

Free to RFS members.