Shopping Guide
Director Makoto Shinkai’s The Garden of Words won the Grand Prix in the AniMovie category at the Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film. This year’s Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film was held from April 22-27. The Grand Prix winners were announced at an award ceremony on the final day.
Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film has a record high attendance of 85,000 and screens the best works from over 1,000 international entrants. Also held concurrently is an international trade fair and conference. The event even rivals the four big animated film festivals: Annecy, Ottawa, Hiroshima, and Zagreb.
AniMovie is a competition category for feature length animated films. It is one of the festival’s main categories. This year, 12 works were chosen for this category from countries like South Africa, France, Italy, Denmark, Norway, U.S., and Belgium. Among these, another Japanese work chosen was Mizuho Nishikubo’s Giovanni’s Island. The famous director Bill Plympton’s Cheatin’ and joint directors Hélène Giraud’s and Thomas Szabo’s Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants were also chosen from the U.S. The Garden of Words shown bright among such prominent works as the Grand Prix winner. “Words” represented by quotes from the Manyoushuu have an important part in the work, and the story is one that crosses borders with its charm.
The Garden of Words is a 2013 work directed by the well-known Makoto Shinkai whose other works include Voices of a Distant Star and 5 Centimeters Per Second. The story follows a relationship between Takao, a high school student who aims to become a shoemaker, and Yukino, an acquaintance he meets on rainy days in the park. The work showcases the high artisanship and poetic direction that Shinkai is known for. It released in theaters in May 2013 and became a smash hit. It is also picking up attention at film festivals and events around the world as Shinkai’s new stand-out work.
Source: animeanime
