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Glasgow Film Festival Screens Okada's Maquia, Ponoc's Mary
posted on by Andrew Osmond
The Glasgow Film Festival 2018 will run from February 21 to March 4. Screenings can be booked now by GFF members and will become available to the public on Monday January 29 at 10 a.m.
As reported previously, the festival will show P.A. Works, Showgate, and Mari Okada's new film Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana o Kazarō. While the Anime Limited blog is giving the English title Maquia - When the Promised Flower Blooms, it is listed on the festival site under the title Let's Decorate the Promised Flowers in the Farewell Morning. The screening will be at the Glasgow Film Theatre. It will be for viewers 15 and over, at 1.30 p.m. on Sunday March 4.
The film will open in Japan on February 24. Anime Limited describes the story:
The people of Iolph have a lifespan of hundreds of years and maintain their teenage appearances for life, but when the peace of this town is shattered by those who want the secret to their longevity for themselves, a young girl named Maquia is forced to escape. Wandering the land alone, upon finding an orphaned baby she chooses to raise him, but as this boy grows up so the difference in their lifespans is thrown into ever-sharper relief.
There will also be two festival screenings of Studio Ponoc's Mary and The Witch's Flower at the Glasgow Film Theatre. The English dub will be shown on Saturday February 24 at 3.15 p.m. and the subtitled version will be shown on Sunday February 25 at 3.30 p.m.
Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who directed Studio Ghibli's Arrietty and When Marnie Was There, directed Mary and The Witch's Flower, and also penned the script for the film alongside Riko Sakaguchi, who wrote the screenplay for Isao Takahata's The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. Takatsugu Muramatsu (When Marnie Was There) composed the music. Yoshiaki Nishimura is credited as producer. The staff page on the film's website further noted that many former staff from Studio Ghibli joined Ponoc in the film's production.
The BFG's Ruby Barnhill stars in the dub as the titular character Mary, and Kate Winslet (Titanic, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Mountain Between Us) plays school chairwoman Madam Mumblechook. Jim Broadbent, who co-starred with Winslet in Iris, plays Mumblechook's colleague Doctor Dee. Other cast members include Ewen Bremner, Lynda Baron, Rasmus Hardiker, Teresa Gallagher, Morwenna Banks, and Louis Ashbourne Serkis.
The film is based on Mary Stewart's book The Little Broomstick. Studio Ponoc scouted locations in Shropshire, U.K., the setting of the original novel. The Japanese version stars Hana Sugisaki (When Marnie Was There, live-action Blade of the Immortal) as Mary and Ryunosuke Kamiki (The Secret World of Arrietty's Sho, your name.'s Taki) as Peter.
The festival brochure also lists a 'secret location' screening of Attack on Titan: Roar of Awakening, a compilation of Attack on Titan's second TV season that was broadcast last year. This will be on Thursday March 1, with buses leaving to the screening at 5.30 p.m. The whole event will take approximately six hours; the film itself is listed as two hours.
The festival will also include two screenings of Takahide Hori's stop-motion feature film film JUNK HEAD, on Sunday February 25 at 8.15 p.m. and again on Monday February 26 at 3.30 p.m. The screenings will be at the CCA (Centre for Contemporary Arts) and are for viewers of 15 and over. According to the festival brochure, the film runs 115 minutes and is described as follows:
Hundreds of years in the future, life on Earth has become a withered mess. Human reproduction has been abandoned. Armies of clones, developed to help aid the dwindling workforce, have revolted and carved out their own world - underground. Once peaceful beings, the clones have evolved into unrecognisable beasts, with many vying for global destruction. One human's mission to explore this world evolves into a journey of discovery and a fight for survival. Four years in the making, Takahide Hori's much-anticipated dystopian masterpiece questions our perceptions of society.
The official trailer for JUNK HEAD has been posted on YouTube:
Via Anime UK News
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