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Released
2021 · FILM

Drive My Car

A grieving theatre director takes on a multilingual staging of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima, where his quiet driver becomes an unexpected confidante, forcing him to confront buried pain and hidden truths before the opening night.

“Go on living.”

Directed by
Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Written by
Haruki Murakami, Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Rated
MPA · NR
Runtime
179 min
Language
JA
Drama

Synopsis

Yusuke Kafuku, a stage actor and director, continues to struggle with the grief of losing his wife two years earlier when he agrees to direct a production of Uncle Vanya at a theater festival in Hiroshima. There, he meets Misaki, a reserved young woman assigned to serve as his driver. As they spend time together during the rides, personal secrets and emotional revelations gradually come to light.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 30

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Azusa YamazakiShot by Hidetoshi ShinomiyaScored by Eiko IshibashiDesigned by Hyeon Seon Seo

Box Office

2021 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 12× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$15.4M

Budget$1.3M
Worldwide gross$15.4M
break-even (2.5×)

US & Canada: $2.4M — 15% of worldwide · International: $13.0M (85%)

Opening weekend: $14K — 1% of its US run. It had legs — it kept earning long after opening weekend.

Peak 2 theaters

Also known as

  • Doraibu mai kāde
  • Drive My Carde
  • Drive My Caren
  • Doraibu mai kāit

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