Language: In Japanese

Makoto Shinkai is perhaps the world’s finest animator and his brilliant new feature delivers frame after frame of jaw-dropping photorealistic splendor: skyscapes of unspeakable majesty, a butterfly on a twig, a blade of grass — all are rendered with such astounding delicacy and precision that you mourn their passing once the image has left the screen. The story is a modern-day Orpheus tale with a sci-fi twist that pays tribute to the great works of Hayao Miyazaki — especially Princess Mononoke — with its demonic spirit-gods and magnificent forest creatures. Asuna spends her afternoons alone in the mountains, using her crystal radio to listen to haunting songs from somewhere far away. One afternoon, a wild bear-like creature attacks and Asuna is saved by Shun, a boy with strange powers who comes from a mythical underworld beneath the Earth that is a gateway to the afterlife. When Asuna returns the next day to find him gone, she decides to leave the world of the living behind and follow him.

The last time Momo saw her father they had a fight — and now all she has left to remember him by is an incomplete letter that he had started to write her, a blank piece of paper penned with the words “Dear Momo” but nothing more. Moving with her mother from bustling Tokyo to the remote Japanese island of Shio, she soon discovers three goblins living in her attic, a trio of mischievous spirit-creatures who have been assigned to watch over her and that only she can see. The goblins are also perpetually famished and they begin to wreak havoc on the formerly tranquil island, ransacking pantries and ravaging orchards — acts for which Momo often has to take the blame. But these funny monsters also have a serious side, and may hold the key to helping Momo understand what her father had been trying to tell her. A Letter to Momo is a wonderfully expressive and beautifully hand drawn tale that combines bursts of whimsy and kinetic humor with deep felt emotion and drama. The animation is superb throughout, from the painstakingly rendered serenity of the island’s Shinto shrines to the climactic finale — a frantic chase featuring thousands of squirming, morphing ghosts and goblins that is the best flight of supernatural fancy since Spirited Away.

Covering territory explored by Blade Runner and I, Robot (the film makes frequent allusions to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics), Time of Eve is an exquisitely drawn, sci-fi allegory that probes questions of artificial intelligence while flirting with the moral and personal implications of human-robot romance. It is the future and household androids are becoming common. Completely lifelike and indistinguishable from humans, androids are programmed to serve with devotion — so it is no wonder that high schooler Rikuo begins to have unsettling feelings towards his android Sammy, feelings heightened when he discovers a curious phrase recorded in her activity log, “Are you enjoying the Time of Eve?” Investigating with his buddy Masaki, they discover an enigmatic underground café, a robot safe-zone, where androids and humans interact as equals — in apparent violation of guidelines set by the all-powerful Robot Ethics Committee. Inside the café distinctions between human and android are blurred and both seem to reveal layers of emotional complexity not apparent in the outside world.

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.

Screening for the first time outside of Japan, Giovanni’s Island is the latest grand opus from famed anime studio Production I.G (A Letter to Momo, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade). Spanning multiple generations and locations, the film delicately weaves the true story of two young brothers whose life on the small, remote island of Shikotan becomes forever changed in the aftermath of WWII. Giovanni and Campanella, nicknamed after characters in the beloved Japanese novel Night on the Galactic Railroad, live a free-spirited island life, chasing each other along beach-side cliffs and dreaming about adventures on the Galactic Railroad. But when the Red Army occupies their tiny island following Japan’s surrender, they are suddenly confronted with new foreigners — including a peculiar and enticing new neighbor, the golden-haired Tanya, daughter of the Soviet commander. Learning about each other’s exotic and strange cuisines, music and language creates a quick bond for the children — even while the occupation brings on heavier implications for their families. An elegance and beauty permeates the hand-drawn animation and symphonic score of the film, creating a timeless drama where moments of emotional impact are tempered by animated flights of whimsy and fantasy, as the brothers prove much larger in spirit and strength than their rosy-cheeked, small frames would suggest.

The new feature from Time of Eve director Yashuro Yoshiura is a perspective-twisting sci-fi adventure about two kids separated by opposite gravities. Patema lives in an underground world of tunnels, the long-abandoned ruins of a giant industrial complex. Though she is a princess, she is held back by the rules imposed by the elders of her clan. One day when she is exploring in a forbidden zone, she is startled by a strange bat-like creature and tumbles headlong into a void — and out into the wide open world above the surface, a place with reversed physics, where if she let go she would “fall up” into the sky and be lost forever. Age is a student on this surface world, a totalitarian society whose compliant population has been brainwashed against the “sinners who fell into the sky.” When he spies Patema hanging upside-down from a tree, he pulls her down to safety, struggling with all his might to keep her earthbound as she grips on to him for dear life. Together their weights cancel each other out, and once they master the art of navigating competing gravitational forces, they set out to evade the leaders of Age’s world and discover the secret that keeps their worlds apart.

case of hana and alice defies genres by combining them: part buddy-comedy, part detective story, all wrapped up in a charming coming-of-age tale. Moonstruck Alice is new to a school that she soon discovers is consumed with the mystery of a missing classmate. Her path to make sense of it all leads her right back to her reclusive neighbor, Hana, and the two quickly bond over their desire to close the case. A silly and slapdash investigation ensues, sending the girls all over the city and into the lives of a carousel of quirky characters. As the mysteries unfold, so does a touching friendship between the girls, portrayed with as much authenticity as the photorealistic animation that accompanies it.

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Pop art superstar Takashi Murakami makes his feature film debut with a campy, genre-defying adventure that mixes lo-fi Japanese disaster movie, new kid-on-the-block coming-of-age story, and Pokemon-style anime with a delirious abundance of wonderfully imagined magical creatures. Setting Murakami’s fantastical animated designs in an otherwise life action film, Jellyfish Eyes tells the story of Masashi, a young boy who moves to a sleepy town in the Japanese countryside in the wake of a natural disaster. When Masashi encounters a flying, jellyfish-like creature, he soon discovers that all his classmates have similarly magical pets, known as F.R.I.E.N.D.s, that are controlled by electronic devices that children use to battle one another. Despite their playful appearances, however, these F.R.I.E.N.D.s turn out to be part of a sinister plot that threatens the entire universe.