I Live in Fear

Toshiro Mifune delivers an outstanding performance as a paranoid man striving to move his family to Brazil to escape the nuclear holocaust which he fears is imminent.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki triggered numerous responses within post-war Japanese cinema, but few as original as Akira Kurosawa’s nagging account of a wealthy foundry owner (Toshiro Mifune) who, terrified at the prospect of nuclear holocaust, strives to persuade his reluctant family to move to Brazil. The mood of nuclear paranoia has rarely been so powerfully caught as in this eerily reiterative portrait of obsession