Festival Year: 2013
Flicker Lounge
Short Films Two
Short Films One
Shorts For Tots
Girls’ POV Shorts
Meet the Small Potatoes
Wolf Children
NYICFF is thrilled to present the brilliant third feature from Mamoru Hosoda, whose Summer Wars (NYICFF 2010) and The Girl Who Leapt Through (NYICFF 2007) have established him as one of the world’s top creative forces in animation. One day Hana spies a mysterious outcast sitting in on her college lecture and decides to follow him. A romance ensues, and when it turns out her new beau is part wolf, she is accepting (and maybe even a little attracted to the idea). Before long Hana gives birth to two children, Ame (Rain) and Yuki (Snow), rambunctious bundles of joy who transform into wolves when excited and whose little ears are as adorable as their fangs are sharp. When they are suddenly left without a father, Hana does her best to raise her changeling children on her own, but it’s no easy task. While normal children struggle with teething and tantrums, Ame and Yuki grow fur, howl, and destroy furniture — and it isn’t long before the neighbors begin to notice their wolf-like tendencies. In order to maintain the family secret, Hana escapes to the country, turning a dilapidated farmhouse into a loving home, where each child is free to pursue its wolfish and human sides. Wolf Children is Hosoda’s most emotionally resonant film to date, a stunningly animated and heart-felt fable about growing up, growing apart, and the choices faced along the way.
Hey Krishna
Packed with iridescent hues, outrageous characters, epic cartoon battles, and endearingly loopy musical interludes, Hey Krishna is about as much fun as you can have in a movie theater. As it turns out, Hindu deities make awesome cartoon superheroes and villains. For this is the story of the child Krishna, the naughty prankster with the beautiful blue hue and long eyelashes — and a particular fondness for milk. A prophesy foretells that the brutal tyrant Kans will be killed by the eighth child of his sister Devaki — and so Kans has Devaki imprisoned, and each of her children is taken away at birth and destroyed (tastefully, mind you — this is a children’s movie!). But her eighth child, the infant Krishna, is spirited away to a nearby village to be raised by peasants. When Kans hears that Krishna has escaped his fate, he sends out demons and monsters to finish the job. And Oh what monsters! In one of the film’s more outré musical numbers, the bodacious she-demon Putana (Bollywood pop-star Sunidhi Chauhan) as- cends from the netherworld like a pole-dancer and attempts to kill Krishna by breastfeeding him with poisoned milk — only to have Krishna (somewhat alarmingly) defeat her by…well, we won’t spoil it for you, just go see the movie.
Welcome to the Space Show
NYICFF favorite Welcome to the Space Show returns in a brand new English-language version! With an intergalactic cast of thousands, Koji Masunari’s colorfully explosive debut feature sets a new high for visual spectacle and sheer inventiveness, in what has to be one of the most gleefully surreal depictions of alien life forms ever portrayed in cinema. It seems like just another lazy summer is in store for Amane and her older cousin Natsuki. Lolling about the Japanese countryside, the days are blithe and boundless. But boredom quickly vanishes when they find an injured dog in the woods and bring him back to the cabin — only to discover that he is not a dog at all, but Pochi, an alien botanist sent to Earth to track down a rare and powerful plant called Zughaan (better known to Earthlings as wasabi root). Before long, Pochi has whisked the kids away to a space colony on the dark side of the moon, an interstellar melting pot where we experience a non-stop parade of humorous alien creatures, jellyfish spaceships, dragon trains, and — if that weren’t enough — a theme song from UK pop anomaly Susan Boyle. (Really? Yes, really.) The plot twists come fast and furious, and with such a glorious barrage of color and invention washing across the screen, you just want to hit pause and gawk at the wonder of what you are seeing.
Notebook Babies
From NYICFF alumnus Tony Dusko, a series of short, humorous meditations on life calibrated for the self-actualized preschooler.
The Day of the Crows
Deep in the woods, among towering trees and dense meadows, lives Pumpkin, a burly, ogre-like man, who towers like a giant over the tiny boy who is his only child. Raised like an animal since birth and knowing only the ways of the wild, the boy has been forbidden to venture beyond the edge of the forest to the place his father calls “The World Beyond.” So the nameless boy spends his days in isolation, honing his slingshot skills, eating small creatures, and confiding in his only friends: the half-human, half-animal spirits that occupy the strange forest that is his home. One day his father is injured, and the boy has no choice but to leave the woods in search of help. Entering a neighboring village, he befriends a young girl, Manon, and for the first time in his life begins to experience the wonders that human contact and civilization have to offer. Yet village life is not as harmonious as it first appears — and after discovering the truth about his family’s past, the boy gathers his courage and returns to the forest to confront his father. With tips of the hat to the enchanted forest worlds of Hayao Miyazaki and François Truffaut’s The Wild Child, this lushly animated film travels the blurred lines between animal and human, nature and civilization, and the realms of the living and of spirits. But underneath it all is a simple story of a father’s lost love and a boy’s brave struggle to recapture it.
From Up on Poppy Hill
NYICFF is extremely proud to present the US premiere of the highly anticipated new film from Studio Ghibli, creators of Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s DeliveryService, and many other animated masterpieces. Written by legendary studio founder Hayao Miyazaki and directed by Goro Miyazaki, From Up on Poppy Hill marks the first feature film collaboration between father and son. The results are stunning — a pure, sincere, nuanced and heartfelt film that signals yet another triumph for the esteemed studio. The setting is Yokohama in 1963, and the filmmakers masterfully bring to life the bustling seaside town, with its salty air, sun-drenched gardens, and some of the most mouthwatering Japanese home-cooking set to film (plan on ramen and pork katsu after the movie). The story centers on an innocent romance beginning to bud between Umi and Shun, two high school kids caught up in the changing times. Japan is picking itself up from the devastation of World War II and preparing to host the 1964 Olympics — and the mood is one of both optimism and conflict as the young generation struggles to throw off the shackles of a troubled past. This sense of yearning and possibility is palpable, evoking both a wide-eyed hope for the future and a longing nostalgia for a past that can never be recovered. Star-filled cast includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Christina Hendricks, Ron Howard and Anton Yelchin, among many others.
The Zigzag Kid
Making its first US appearance following rave reviews in Berlin and Toronto, The Zigzag Kid is a stylish, witty, action packed caper a la Pink Panther, featuring Isabella Rossellini as a nightclub chanteuse and a terrific performance by the young lead (newcomer Thomas Simon). Nono is the son of the world’s greatest police inspector and has been trained since birth in the finer arts of sleuthing. So when a train trip to stay with his terribly boring Uncle Shmuel morphs into a rollicking mystery-solving adventure, Nono couldn’t be more thrilled. And when he meets up with the notorious criminal Felix Glick, his father’s arch nemesis, he finally gets the chance to prove that he has what it takes to be a great detective. Wearing disguises and on the run from the police, Felix and Nono head to the French Riviera, where Felix introduces Nono to the seductive Lola Ciperola. Now with only twenty-four hours to go before his Bar Mitzvah, Nono has to complete his high-stakes mission — while also confronting the mystery of his own identity and the truth about the mother he has never known. Based on the coming-of-age novel by Israeli writer David Grossman, The Zigzag Kid is a whimsical, sharply written and wonderfully entertaining film — a sure-fire crowd pleaser that also touches on more serious themes of self-discovery, the strength of family, and acceptance.
Kirikou and the Men and the Women
The pint-sized — or more like peanut-sized — child hero Kirikou returns in the new feature from world-renowned animator/director/storyteller Michel Ocelot, who NYICFF audiences should be well familiar with from Kirikou and the Sorceress, Azur & Asmar, and Tales of the Night. This third film in the Kirikou trilogy weaves together a collection of short-form fables, mixing traditional storytelling and mythology with bits of humor and wit, backed by an upbeat musical score from Malian, Togolese and French artists. Ocelot’s vibrant use of color is everywhere on display — a black panther creeps into the village at night against impossibly deep blue skies, firelight sets off shadows against thatched huts, a Bedouin boy wrapped from head to toe in azure robes blazes like a sapphire against the tawny desert sand — while a village elder introducing each story lends an Arabian Nights quality to the film. Throughout, Kirikou is called upon to save his village from perils both supernatural and human, which he does with a combination of speed, cunning and humor — as well as a certain naiveté about the way the world really works. It is precisely such innocence that makes Kirikou such an endearing and enduring character.
Kauwboy
The Netherlands’ official entry for this year’s Oscars® and winner of the Best First Feature award at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival, Kauwboy is a tender portrait of a boy struggling to come to terms with a family that’s not what it once was. With his country-singer mother absent, Jojo lives alone with his security guard father, a man of few words, who is quick to anger and has seemingly no affection for his 10-year-old son. Left to his own devices, Jojo discovers an abandoned baby crow in the woods near their house — and finds solace in caring for this small creature, who is even more alone and vulnerable than he is. Bringing the crow home, Jojo has to exert great efforts to hide the bird from his dad (under his bed, in the closet, in the fridge…) and the viewer is ever on edge against the inevitable outburst that would attend its discovery. But what really drives the drama is the questionable whereabouts of Jojo’s mother, who seems never to return from tour. Filmed in the rural Dutch countryside and featuring wonderfully natural performances, Kauwboy is a beautifully cinematic, bittersweet film that explores issues of loss and sorrow, while painting a joyfully upbeat picture of acceptance and love.
Ernest & Celestine
Director Benjamin Renner is our guest for the theatrical premiere of the new English language version, featuring Forest Whitaker, Mackenzie Foy, Lauren Bacall, Paul Giamatti, William H. Macy, Megan Mullally, Nick Offerman, and Jeffrey Wright. Deep below snowy, cobblestone streets, tucked away in networks of winding subterranean tunnels, lives a civilization of hardworking mice, terrified of the bears who live above ground. Unlike her fellow mice, Celestine is an artist and a dreamer—and when she nearly ends up as breakfast for ursine troubadour Ernest, the two form an unlikely bond. But it isn’t long before their friendship is put on trial by their respective bear-fearing and mice-eating communities. Ernest & Celestine joyfully leaps across genres and influences to capture the kinetic, limitless possibilities of animated storytelling. Like a gorgeous watercolor painting brought to life, a constantly shifting pastel color palette bursts and drips across the screen, while wonderful storytelling and brilliant comic timing draw up influences as varied as Buster Keaton, Bugs Bunny, and the outlaw romanticism of Bonnie and Clyde.
Zarafa
Inspired by the true story of the first giraffe to visit France, Zarafa is a sumptuously-animated and stirring adventure — a throwback to a bygone era of hand-drawn animation and epic storytelling set among sweeping vistas of parched desert, wind-swept mountains and open skies. Under the cover of night a small boy, Maki, loosens the shackles that bind him and escapes into the desert night. Pursued by slavers across the moon-lit savannah, Maki meets Zarafa, a baby giraffe — and an orphan, just like him — as well as the turbaned nomad Hassan, Prince of the Desert. Hassan takes them to Alexandria for an audience with the Pasha of Egypt, who orders him to deliver the exotic animal as a gift to King Charles of France. And so Maki, Zarafa and Hassan take off in a hot-air balloon to cross the Mediterranean — an unbelievably beautiful and adventure-filled ride through the pink-skied, honey-hued expanses of Northern Africa, the bustling port of Marseilles, and over the snow-capped peaks of the Alps, arriving at last in Paris. There the unimpressed French monarch (portrayed as a laughable, semi-grotesque, pasty-faced, inbred by the same character designer as The Triplets of Belleville) indifferently accepts the gift, but Maki is determined to return Zarafa back to his rightful home in Africa.
Junior
Justine, a.k.a. Junior, is a 13-year-old tomboy with pimples and a quirky sense of humor. She talks trash like the boys and is a tad misogynous — especially when it comes to pretty girls like her sister. However, having been diagnosed with stomach flu, Junior’s body begins to undergo a bizarre and frightening metamorphosis.
Jeanine
Jeanine is fed up with her hippie family and their disordered life of homemade clothes, frivolous fun, and indulgent creativity. What Jeanine seeks is order, dis- cipline, and routine — and so she decides to try out for a gymnastics school and a life of rigor, repetition and uniforms.
Meet the Small Potatoes
Meet the Small Potatoes — a rockin’ quartet consisting of the cutest spuds to ever rule the radio waves. This musical mockumentary traces the group from humble beginnings on an Idaho potato farm to their meteoric rise to international pop stardom. Unfortunately, while singing spuds may be something completely new, the perils of celebrity are all too familiar — and at the height of their fame, the lovable diva Ruby decides that she’s the real star and branches out on her own, leaving Nate, the jazzy poet, Chip, the sweetheart, and Olaf the chubby intellectual, to pick up the pieces. Fret you not — this story has a happy ending, because no rock saga would be complete without the eventual reunion concert! The film has an authentic and almost gritty feel, with the adorably animated characters placed in live action archival settings (1960’s era Coney Island in particular is a real treat), and true to the rock-doc form, musical numbers are punctuated with interviews with fans, a former manager, and the southern DJ who helped them to early success. Initially created as a This is Spinal Tap for the pre-school set, the Potatoes have picked up an even larger fan base of older kids and ‘tweens — come see what all the excitement is about!
Pinocchio
Enzo D’Aló’s colorful and musical re-telling of this classic tale hews much closer to both the spirit and plot of Carlo Collodi’s original story than the Disney version, with Pinocchio remaining for most of the picture a rambunctious, easily-distracted, and unrepentant little scamp, who dances and trips from one strange adventure to the next in a surreal, Alice in Wonderland-like ride that never quite takes a pause. Mere moments after Geppetto has whittled a talking log into the son he never had, his newborn marionette offspring is already causing him grief. And though Cricket, Blue Fairy, and others point him on the right path, our anti-hero prefers to play hooky, and finds himself at the mercy of a host of outlandish — and strikingly animated — characters almost too numerous to recount: an evil marionette master and a lurid-green fishmonger, cat and fox con-artists, a pair of bowler-hatted bobby officers who look like something out of Yellow Submarine – landing at last in a phantasmagoric amusement park-turned-factory camp, where little boys are turned into donkeys and made to work from morning to night. In the end, after escaping from these and other predicaments, Pinocchio finds himself in the belly of a giant shark, where he is reunited with his dear papa and seems finally to have learned what it means to be good.
The Painting
In this wry parable, a kingdom is divided into the three castes: the impeccably painted Alldunns who reside in a majestic palace; the Halfies who the Painter has left incomplete; and the untouchable Sketchies, simple charcoal outlines who are banished to the cursed forest. Chastised for her forbidden love for an Alldunn and shamed by her unadorned face, Halfie Claire runs away into the forest. Her beloved Ramo and best friend Lola journey after her, passing between the forbidden Death Flowers that guard the boundaries of the forest (in one of the film’s most radiantly gorgeous scenes), and arriving finally at the very edge of the painting — where they tumble through the canvas and into the Painter’s studio. The abandoned workspace is strewn with paintings, each containing its own animated world — and in a feast for both the eyes and imagination, they explore first one picture and then another, attempting to discover just what the Painter has in mind for all his creations.
Approved for Adoption
NYICFF proudly presents the North American premiere of this fascinating animated autobiography from filmmaker Jung Henin, one of thousands of Korean children adopted into Europe after the end of the Korean War. A series of gorgeously animated, sepia toned vignettes — some humorous and some poetic — track Jung from the day of his adoption as he meets his new (blond) siblings, through elementary school, and into his teenage years, when his emerging sense of identity begins to create fissures at home and to inflame the latent biases of his adoptive parents. Throughout all of this, Jung finds release in drawing – and the film we see is really the ultimate expression of what started as the doodles of a boy stranded between two cultures. The filmmaker tells his story using his own animation intercut with snippets of super 8 family footage, archival film, and new footage documenting his first trip to Korea. The result is an animated memoir like no other: clear-eyed and unflinching, humorous and wry, and above all, inspiring in the capacity of the human heart. This is a beautifully rendered and exceedingly moving story about the search for love, belonging, and a sense of self.
Tastes Like Chicken?
The autobiography of a factory farm chicken that has a moment of lucidity and becomes aware of the tragedy of her existence.
I’m Going to Mum’s
Poor Jacob. His newly divorced parents insist on dressing him in ridiculous clothes to spite each other — and the continual changing of outfits becomes a parade of absurdity. With his parents’ feuding getting worse by the day, Jacob resorts to desperate fashion measures to assert his identity.
Bao
Bao loves taking the train with his sister. It’s the highlight of his day. But today, everything is different and nothing will ever be the same.
The Runaway
A fifty Euro note. Chewing gum. A retractable dog leash. A stain on the wall in the shape of Australia. Each of these elements has its own unique story, but how do they fit together?
Brumlik and Animuk
An endearingly quirky tale involving a chivalrous polar bear, a levitating Inuit girl, and a stranded narwhal. Strange things are happening up north.
Pishto Goes Away
One autumn, Pishto gets so sick and tired of everything that he decides to leave for good. But a chance encounter with another lost soul may just help him see things differently.