General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20267 min read

Plan 75 (PLAN 75)

Plan 75 (PLAN 75, プラン75) is a 2022 Japanese dystopian drama directed by Chie Hayakawa (早川千絵) in her feature debut, set in a near-future Japan where a government program offers citizens aged 75 and older the option of voluntary euthanasia as a remedy for a super-aged society¹. It premiered in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and received the Caméra d'Or Special Mention¹, and it was selected as Japan's entry for Best International Film at the 2023 Academy Awards².

Key fact	Detail
Director / screenplay	Chie Hayakawa, her feature debut¹
Premiere	Un Certain Regard, 2022 Cannes Film Festival; Caméra d'Or Special Mention¹
Premise	A government program gives people 75 and older the right to choose death, with euthanasia, cremation, and burial provided free of charge¹^•³
Main cast	Chieko Baisho (Michi), Hayato Isomura (Hiromu), Stefanie Arianne (Maria), Yuumi Kawai (Yoko), Taka Takao (Yukio)¹
Runtime / countries	112 minutes; Japan, France, Philippines (some listings give 113 minutes)¹^•⁴
Origin	Expanded from Hayakawa's short in the 2018 anthology Ten Years Japan, executive produced by Hirokazu Kore-eda⁴
Awards in Japan	Excellence awards for lead actress and screenplay at the 46th Japan Academy Prize⁵

Spoilers

Premise and story

The film imagines a Japan that has enacted a law called Plan 75, under which anyone aged 75 or older may sign up for state-funded clinical euthanasia⁶. The program is marketed with the slogan "For our bright future!" and framed as the freedom to die on one's own terms, while the government relies on a sense of self-sacrifice to fuel enrollment⁶. Enrollees receive a financial incentive that lets them pay for a final journey or a luxurious meal before dying in a clinic⁷.

The story follows three loosely connected people. Michi (Chieko Baisho), a 78-year-old hotel cleaner who lives alone, loses her job and her housing and comes to see enrollment as her last resort⁶^•⁸. Hiromu (Hayato Isomura) works as a Plan 75 recruiter at a municipal application desk and begins to question the program when his estranged uncle Yukio (Taka Takao) applies on his 75th birthday⁶^•⁹. Maria (Stefanie Arianne), a Filipino migrant worker, leaves elder care for better-paid work disposing of the belongings of the euthanized, to pay for her daughter's medically necessary surgery⁶^•⁹. Yuumi Kawai plays Yoko, a call-center worker who supports applicants in the period before their scheduled death and comes to doubt the system⁵.

The film's background includes hate crimes against the elderly by younger people who resent the cost of their care, and the program's existence pushes the old further to society's margins⁶^•¹⁰. Critics noted that the film devotes much of its running time to the procedures, paperwork, and impersonal administration of the program, and that its world is built through understated details such as radio broadcasts announcing new edicts¹¹^•⁹.

Origins and development

Plan 75 began as a short film in Ten Years Japan (2018), an anthology speculating on Japanese society a decade ahead, co-produced by Hirokazu Kore-eda⁴. Hayakawa rebuilt the story with a new cast for the feature⁵.

Hayakawa has said the idea came from her anger at social intolerance toward the socially weak, including the elderly, the disabled, and the poor, and at the spread of a "self-responsibility" discourse after she returned to Japan in 2008 following about ten years in New York²^•¹². She has cited as a catalyst the 2016 killing rampage at a care facility for disabled people in Sagamihara, which she read as the product of a society in which intolerance had become a dominant value¹³^•¹⁴. While writing the feature during the COVID-19 pandemic, she debated whether to make a film that might deepen public anxiety, and decided instead to carry the story to a point of hope¹². For research she interviewed about fifteen people in their seventies and eighties about how they would view the program if it existed; she recalled the recurring phrase "I don't want to be a burden to anyone"¹².

Production and cast

The film was produced by Loaded Films (Tokyo) with secondary production from Urban Factory (France), Fusee Media (Philippines), and the Doha Film Institute (Qatar)¹. Hideho Urata shot the film, Rémi Boubal wrote the music, Anne Klotz edited, and Philippe Grivel handled sound¹. Jason Gray collaborated on the screenplay¹⁵. The lead, Chieko Baisho, was a veteran performer known for playing Sakura across the Tora-san series; Hayakawa described her as a respectful and charismatic presence on set⁵^•¹³.

Hayakawa was born in Tokyo in 1976, studied photography at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and had her student short Niagara selected for the Cinéfondation at Cannes in 2014¹⁶. Her next feature, Renoir, competed for the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2025¹⁶.

Reception

At Cannes the film won the Caméra d'Or Special Mention for a first feature¹. In Japan it received excellence awards for lead actress and screenplay at the 46th Japan Academy Prize⁵, and it ran in Japanese theaters as a long-run release that earned more than 330 million yen¹⁷. It was made available for streaming in the United States in late 2023³.

Critics generally responded favorably: Metacritic recorded a metascore of 70 based on 15 reviews, with 11 positive and 4 mixed¹¹, and IMDb users gave it 6.6 out of 10¹⁸. Reviewers singled out Baisho's performance and the film's restraint. David Ehrlich of IndieWire wrote that the film "isn't for or against assisted suicide, but it tenderly laments a society in which 'death with dignity' is only offered as compensation for a life without it"¹¹. Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times described Baisho's performance as turning Michi's small daily acts into "a quiet act of resistance against her perceived uselessness"¹¹.

Themes and social context

The film is routinely read against Japan's actual demographics. The Japanese government's 2026 white paper on the aging society reports that people aged 65 and over make up 29.4 percent of the population, that those 75 and over number 21.27 million, or 17.3 percent of the total, and that by 2070 roughly one person in four is projected to be 75 or older¹⁹. A promotional note for the film observed that in 2025 one in five Japanese was said to be 75 or older, making the film's situation hard to dismiss as fantasy²⁰.

Scholars have placed the film in several traditions. Commentators compare it to the 1970s dystopias Soylent Green and Logan's Run, which imagined societies eliminating the old, while noting that Plan 75 differs by depicting authoritarianism as an ordinary, bureaucratic everyday rather than a distant regime²¹^•¹⁵. Japanese commentary has linked it to the Ubasuteyama legend of abandoning elderly relatives, as a modern variation reflecting older adults' fear of becoming a burden²². A study in Screen argued that the film distinguishes physical care from a care that recognizes personhood, since Michi and her friends need housing, money, and human connection more than medical attention²³. A cultural-gerontology analysis described the narrative as normalizing ageism by presenting voluntary death as a practical response to loneliness, poverty, and depression while relieving an economic crisis⁷.

Hayakawa herself framed the film's aim as showing "the beauty and dignity of human life"¹³.

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Science fiction and fantasy films (individual works) › Science fiction and fantasy films of the 2020s › Science fiction films of the 2020s › Titles M to X

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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