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Production I.G.'s A Letter to Momo Added to Scotland Loves Anime Line-Up

Scotland Loves Animation announced that it will screen Hiroyuki Okiura and Production I.G's A Letter to Momo (Momo e no Tegami) anime film next month, at both the GLASGOW and Edinburgh events. The Scotland Loves Anime festival will run from October 7 to 9 at GLASGOW, and October 14 to 16 at Edinburgh. Tickets for the GLASGOW screenings are now on sale online. The GLASGOW screening of A Letter to Momo will be at 6.45 p.m. on Sunday 9 October.

Production I.G describes the story of the film as follows:

Momo is a young girl who grew up in a big city. However, following the premature loss of her father, she has to move with her mother to the old family house on a remote island. Here, time seems to have stopped: old wooden buildings, holy shrines surrounded by trees, fields painstakingly carved out from steep hills... and no shopping mall. Needless to say, Momo is not too overenthusiastic about this new environment. Most of all, her heart is still feeling uneasy about an unfinished letter left by her father. A letter that contained only two words: "Dear Momo..." What was dad going to say? One day, exploring the attic of her new big house, Momo finds a dusty and worn out book. And from that moment, something really unexpected starts happening around her...

The film will be included in the "Judges" category of Scotland Loves Anime (more details forthcoming), alongside some of the festival's other screenings including Keiichi Hara's award-winning feature film Colorful and the children's fantasy Hotarubi no Mori e. More details of the festival screenings are available here (and here regarding its screening of the Madhouse flying fantasy To Aru Hikūshi e no Tsuioku, or Flashbacks to a Certain Aerial Pilot).

Letter to Momo had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. As well as the Scotland screenings, it will have two other screenings in October, at the Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival in Spain, and the Busan International Film Festival in Korea. It opens in Japan during next spring's Golden Week holidays.

okiura spent seven years planning, writing, storyboarding, and directing the film; it is his first return to the proverbial director's chair since Jin-Roh in 2000. Yuko Hara, the keyboardist for the band Southern All Stars, spent five years on the theme song "Uruswashimahoroba ~Utsukushii Basho~."

Masashi Ando (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) oversaw the animation process. Among the animators on the team were Toshiyuki Inoue (Akira), Ei Inoue (The Cat Returns), Takeshi Honda (Evangelion: 2.0 You Can [Not] Advance), Tetsuya Nishio (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence), and Hiroyuki Aoyama (Summer Wars). Hiroshi Ohno (Kiki's Delivery Service) served as art director.

Image © 2011 Momo e no Tegami Production Committee