Two years before he made the epic Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa directed this simple tale of a Japanese salaryman who learns he has less than a year to live. Partially based on Leo Tolstoy’s short masterpiece The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the film follows Kanji Watanabe around Tokyo as he attempts to find his life’s meaning with what little time he has left, though his ungrateful son and the unfulfilling pleasures of the city’s nightlife certainly don’t help. This emotionally devastating film was the first collaboration between Kurosawa and his legendary screenwriting companion Hideo Oguni.