News
Spain's Sitges, Korea's Busan to Show I.G's Letter to Momo
posted on by Egan Loo
Spain's Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia and South Korea's Busan International Film Festival with screen Hiroyuki Okiura and Production I.G's A Letter to Momo (Momo e no Tegami) anime film next month. 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 Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival runs from October 6 to 16, and the Busan International Film Festival runs from October 6 to 14. A Letter to Momo will be part of the Animation Showcase of Busan's Wide Angle program. The film just had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this past week.
The film will open 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. Yūko 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.
Source: Anime Anime Japan
Image © 2011 Momo e no Tegami Production Committee
