"If the government sponsored a euthanasia program for people 75 and over, would you consent to it?"

"'Most people were very positive about it,' [Chie] Hayakawa said. 'They didn’t want to be a burden on other people or their children.'... In her first feature-length film... the government of a near-future Japan promotes quiet institutionalized deaths and group burials for lonely older people, with cheerful salespeople pitching them on the idea as if hawking travel insurance. 'The mind-set is that if the government tells you to do something, you must do it,' Ms. Hayakawa, 45, said in an interview in Tokyo before the film’s opening in Japan on Friday. Following the rules and not imposing on others, she said, are cultural imperatives 'that make sure you don’t stick out in a group setting.' With a lyrical, understated touch, Ms. Hayakawa has taken on one of the biggest elephants in the room in Japan: the challenges of dealing with the world’s oldest society."

From "A Filmmaker Imagines a Japan Where the Elderly Volunteer to Die/The premise for Chie Hayakawa’s film, 'Plan 75,' is shocking: a government push to euthanize the elderly. In a rapidly aging society, some also wonder: Is the movie prescient?" (NYT).