Poets & Writers Theater

Living is a film directed by Oliver Hermanus with a screenplay by Nobel Prize–winning author Kazuo Ishiguro, adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru, which was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Set in 1950s London, Bill Nighy plays a hardworking civil servant who reflects on his life while facing a fatal illness.

In this 2018 Intelligence Squared video, a friendly and impassioned battle between nineteenth-century novelists Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy is carried out and argued by professor John Mullan and historian Simon Schama with readings by actors Zawe Ashton, Tom Hiddleston, Kit Kingsley, Julia Sawalha, and Timothy West.

Joe Wright and Tom Stoppard's adaptation of the Tolstoy classic, starring Keira Knightley, Jude Law, and Aaron Johnson, will be released in November.