Big Brother has a wicked sense of humour in Ikigami. In an Orwellian society, the ‘National Prosperity Law’ requires every child to be randomly injected with a capsule upon entering primary school that will cause one in a thousand of them to die between the ages of 18 and 24. It is said that the country has prospered as a result of its people having learned to treasure life. It looks a fraud to me, as, despite the proclaimed prosperity, they’re still using cheap and grainy black-and-white cameras for mass surveillance.

In the centre of this is Fujimoto (Shota Matsuda), a young civil servant whose job is to notify a subject 24 hours before his fated death. His first assignment is some run-of-the-mill life-affirming stuff involving a musician looking to enjoy his five minutes of fame, while reconciling with an estranged friend. The second case presents a half-baked moral inquiry that concerns the suicidal son of a politician, who is herself a reformed ‘thought criminal’. The third provides the film’s most heart-warming – and best – moments, as a loving brother tries to trick his blind sister into accepting a cornea transplant after his impending death.

Why make a film on this topic while skimming the philosophical debate entirely, you may ask. Fujimoto’s supervisor seems to hit the nail on the head at one point. “Everybody loves melodrama,” he says. “There are people who grow rich selling it.” He could well be talking about Ikigami’s producers. Edmund Lee

Dir Tomoyuki Takimoto, Category IIB, 134 mins, Opens Thursday 4