UK Premiere - Best International Feature Nominee

Short Synopsis

Hit Japanese blockbuster from the director of Ghost in the Shell.

Review

Meet the Fast Food Grifters, eat-and-run tricksters who gorge themselves upon the dishes of the day at tachigui stand-and-eat stalls without passing so much as a single yen over the counter. These shadowy phantoms of myth and legend crop up in every era, their names saying as much about the time they live as their dietary habits:  Moongaze Ginji’s penchant for traditional buckwheat soba noodles situate him in the days of post-War hardship, while the affluent 80s is the epoch of the voracious Hamburger Tetsu. Then there’s Foxy Croquette O-Gin, Beefbowl Ushigoro, Frankfurter Tatsu, and there’s a lot more to their lives than just food…

The latest work by Mamoru Oshii, director of the acclaimed anime Ghost in the Shell and its sequel, isn’t an easy project to pigeonhole. Adapted from his own novel, it’s essentially a potted retelling of Japanese post-war history, taking us through the Korean War, the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, the formation of the Japanese Red Army and the Bubble Economy Years of the 80s - “from MacArthur to McDonalds”, as one critic astutely puts it.But it’s the innovative surface that most catches the eye. The film utilises a new process named Superlivemation, developed specially for the task by Oshii and the creative team at Production I.G. The 21st century equivalent of a Balinese puppet show, the process involves rendering still photographs as flat objects in 3D space and animating them like they were simple paper cut-outs in a virtual theatre. It’s a safe bet, you wont have seen anything like it ever before.

Jasper Sharp