BERLIN : The earthquake and tsunami that devastated much of eastern Japan may have taken place only 12 years ago, but a generation of children is growing up to whom it means little, and film director Makoto Shinkai felt this needed remedying.
Drawn in lush greens and blues that evoke a fertile, watery Japanese landscape, the film explores intergenerational trauma through the eyes of Suzume, voiced by Nanoka Hara, a schoolgirl who was orphaned by the tsunami that devastated the Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011. Anime has a long tradition at the Berlinale: it was here in 2002 that Hayao Miyazaki's"Spirited Away", the environmentalist fantasy that now figures on many critics' best of all time lists, won the competition's Golden Bear top prize.
The film makes full use of anime's power to depict the uneasiness of a land given to frequent tremors, when the idyllic greens and blues of Japan's landscape give way to the monstrous red of destruction or the greys of settlements abandoned due to shrinking populations or economic crisis.