Stockholm Film Festival

In short, this anime could be described as a Japanese relative to Terry Gilliam's Fisher King (1991). Bums, alcoholics, transvestites and mentally ill people gathered in a warm hearted Christmas tale - writer and director Satoshi Kon, who is a huge admirer of Gilliam's work, has created a beautifully illustrated movie about the search for love and belonging.
Three bums, Gin the alcoholic, Hana the transvestite and Miyuki the homeless girl, live together in a shed in Tokyo. They all carry tragic memories and constantly try to fight them off with a - sometimes unhealthy - dose of humour. One night at Christmas they find
an abandoned baby, and during the search for the parents their own lives take new turns.
Tokyo Godfathers is a feel good movie, but with a twist. The odd Gilliam-type characters are all there and the atmosphere is constantly changing between hope and despair. It's particularly refreshing to see how subjects like mental illness and homosexuality are being portrayed without becoming total stereotypes. The homosexual transvestite Hana quickly turns out to be the highlight of this movie, a character with a thousand moods. The illustrations are superb, as always with Satoshi Kon.

ERIK DANIELSSON

Premiärstatus

Svensk premiär

Medverkande

(voice) Toru Emori, Aya Okamoto, Yoshiaki Umegaki

Producent

Shinichi Kobayashi

Manus

Satoshi Kon

Foto

Katsutoshi Sugai

Musik

Moonriders

Talat språk

Japanese

 

Andra filmer från sektionen Spotlight

Se alla festivalfilmer från 2004