2025 will see the release of A New Dawn, a new anime movie that has been selected for the 77th Cannes Film Festival’s 2024 Annecy Animation Showcase.
A New Dawn is the theatrical director debut of Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, who has credits on movies like Makoto Shinkai‘s The Garden of Words (poster illustrator) and Your Name (recollection scene key animator and unit director), Sunao Katabuchi‘s In This Corner of the World (watercolor painter et al.), and Takayuki Hirao‘s Pompo the Cinephile (art board artist). Shinomiya has previously directed short-form work like Tokino Kousa and the Chiaki Mayumura music video “Boukentai ~Heroes of the old forest~.”
The movie will follow three young people with ties to a 330-year old fireworks factory, which is now facing seizure. According to Variety, the “pastel-washed film” was inspired by The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. The official Cannes description says:
The Obinata Fireworks Shop factory is getting prepared for an administrative action for confiscation tomorrow. It has been six years since Keitaro has been holed up in a closed-down factory creating fireworks by himself, chasing after an illusion of his father who vanished. It is a story about three young people who overcome the extreme weather conditions, disasters and environmental problems imposed on them and establish their own identities.
A New Dawn is a French-Japanese co-production, like Ghost Cat Anzu. Also like that movie, it features the involvement of French animation studio Miyu Productions. The credited Japanese company for A New Dawn is Asmik Ace, Inc, which does “planning, production, and distribution” in regards to animation.
The Annecy Animation Showcase is a “curated selection of today’s most promising animated projects,” where the creative staff are “invited to attend Cannes to pitch their ideas and present their concepts in front of potential sales agents, distributors and festival programmers.” Kenji Iwaisawa‘s Hina is Beautiful was featured last year.
Sources: @anewdawn_movie, Comic Natalie
