6.1The story focuses on high school girl Nagisa Yukiai who lives in a seaside town. She has believed her grandmother's story that spirits dwell in words and they are called "kotodama" (word spirit). One day, she strays into a mini FM station that has not been used for years. As an impulse of the moment, she tries to talk like a DJ using the facility. But her voice accidentally broadcasted reaches someone she has never expected.
7.0Autumn is in the air as the Kitauji High School concert band prepares for the National Competition. The band hears troubling news that Asuka Tanaka, vice president of the club and one of the key euphonium players in the band, may quit! Asuka is beautiful and charismatic and everyone relies on her, but she also has a cool side and never reveals her true self. Kumiko doesn’t get along with Asuka initially, but her feelings change when she learns that Asuka may actually drop out. Asuka has feelings about the euphonium that she cannot tell anyone else…
0.0The story told in Hisser was inspired by a true occurrence. In 2013, a young man in Florida was literally "swallowed up by the earth" when a cesspool suddenly opened up under his bedroom. The film's main setting is a bedroom by night. From the way it was shot, the viewer has the feeling of peering into an abandoned life-size dollhouse. Other sequences show close-up views of a young man lying on a bed with a tormented look on his face or cowering in a corner. The scene is accompanied by an exaggeratedly romantic song whose refrain – "It took me so long to get my feet back off the ground" – alludes to the loss of a loved one and a sense of abysmal loneliness. The song's emotionality contrasts starkly with the artificiality of the scene. The boundary between reproduction and reality grows fluid, and the virtuality – which the artist has carried to a near- perfect extreme – begins to crumble in view of the protagonist's physical and emotional frailty.
0.0Papa, a bullied young boy whose only refuge is a book about space, runs away after being involved in the accident of one of his harassers. His escape to the outskirts of Paris awakens his imagination, somewhere between concrete blocks and starry skies.
6.6A quiet stroll through the imaginary world of Iblard, originally depicted in the paintings by Naohisa Inoue, influenced by Impressionism and Surrealism.
7.2An animated telling of Kobe Bryant's titular poem, signaling his retirement from the sport that made his name.
5.2The second anime short based on Kyoto Animation studio mascot character Baja.
7.0In seclusion at La Quinta del Sordo, Goya confronts illness, memories, and haunting visions, exorcising his demons through the Black Paintings —sacrificing peace, sanity, and self to immortalize his torment.
10.0A stop motion/collaged based independent short film plays with the recontextualisation of memories and how time distorts them.
6.7Gabby heads out on a road trip with her Grandma Gigi to the urban wonderland of Cat Francisco. But when Gabby's dollhouse, her most prized possession, ends up in the hands of an eccentric cat lady named Vera, Gabby sets off on an adventure through the real world to get the Gabby Cats back together and save the dollhouse before it's too late.
7.8A little girl is taken on a mind-bending tour of her distant future.
7.0Kohata Anime Studio is a place full of dreams where animation is made. Baja was raised in this studio by the people who create animation. Floating in a pond outside are his friends the ducks. One night, when all the people are no longer at the studio, Baja takes a peek outside and finds that his duck friends are being attacked by a cat. Will Baja be able to save his friends? A wondrous night adventure begins.
7.0A young boy imagines his mother to be an airplane who travels to exotic lands.
6.0One of the moralities of the trio of authors Milos Macourek, Adolf Born and Jaroslav Doubrava. It deals with the topic of implacability of human optimism and fantasy. In a sad manner it tells us a humorous story of a man living double life: one of a beaten little clerk, humiliated by his arrogant boss, imperious wife and misbehaved descendant; the other of a spoiled hero of a dream empire full of beautiful and tender women, flowers and fantastic figures. From artistic point of view is the film based on Adolf Born's lithographs.
0.0A nude model is posing with statuesque stillness for an elite drawing class – until an unfortunate mosquito bite challenges his self-control. Driven to madness by the itch, he’s caught between the ruthless demand for perfection and his most unhinged, animalistic impulses.
10.0Trapped in their frames and monitored by a menacing curator, two paintings long to escape from the art gallery's white walls. As the paintings lock eyes across the room, an unspoken connection between them sets the stage for revolution. With a distinctive blend of live-action and animation, this short film by Evan Bode employs surreal metaphor to explore ideas about power, resistance, queer identity, visibility, and liberation from constructed borders.
6.5The Quays' interest in esoteric illusions finds its perfect realization in this fascinating animated lecture on the art of anamorphosis. This artistic technique, often used in the 16th- and 17th centuries, utilizes a method of visual distortion with which paintings, when viewed from different angles, mischievously revealed hidden symbols.
6.6A series of short animated segments, without dialog, explore major characters of modern society, such as the plastic surgeon, the fashion-obsessed woman, the rumor-monger, and others, leading to a concluding comment on the progress of civilization.
