Survival Family

Survival Family (2017) is a Japanese tragicomedy you can watch online on iFILM. One ordinary morning, electricity disappears everywhere at once. Phones, trains, running water, even batteries and car engines — all of it simply stops.

Stranded in a dark, silent Tokyo, the city-soft Suzuki family quickly learns how helpless it is without a working socket. The father decides to bike across the country to the grandfather's village, and so begins a long, awkward and exhausting trek through an emptied-out Japan, where cash buys nothing and food and water have to be earned by hand. Director Shinobu Yaguchi stages the apocalypse with no panic and no effects — as a gentle satire on our dependence on gadgets and a stress test for one family. It's funny, embarrassing and unexpectedly moving. Stream Survival Family online on iFILM.