Animated films from the East at the Berlinale: the Japanese 'Suzume' and the Chinese 'Art college 1994'

Animated cinema from the East landed this Thursday with intensity at the Berlinale, the international festival in Berlin, by presenting two films competing for the Golden Bear: the Japanese Suzume and the Chinese Art college 1994. The Japanese film, by director Makoto Shinkai, narrates a hectic journey through his country of a girl who tries to avoid earthquakes with an unusual companion, while the Chinese feature film, signed by Liu Jan, portrays a group of students from the 1990s that reflect on tradition, modernity, art and philosophy.

With Shinkai’s work, Japanese anime returns to the Berlin festival twenty-one years after his compatriot Hayao Miyazaki won gold in 2002 with Spirited Away, an award he won jointly with the British docudrama Bloody Sunday.

This year Suzume would have been the only contender for Asian animation if it hadn’t been for the fact that the Berlinale included at the last minute –it was announced at the beginning of February– the Chinese Art college 1994 in the competition section. Liu Jan thus returns to this contest, where in 2017 she also premiered the Have a nice day contest, an animated dark comedy film for adults.

The Japanese Suzume –which takes its name from the protagonist– “is an entertainment film that talks about serious things, like the earthquake that devastated Japan twelve years ago,” said its director, Makoto Shinkai, at a press conference. Like the Miyazaki master before him, Shinkai, 50, is an anime star. His 2016 film Your Name, which evoked the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that produced great death and the Fukushima nuclear disaster, was a complete success of the genre.

“Animation allows you to reach a very wide audience, older people who watch it with their grandchildren, and you can show them deep themes, such as the traumatic earthquakes suffered by my country, which others may see as an adventure or a romantic dream,” Makoto argued. Shinkai, flanked by the producer, Genki Kawamura, and by the actress Nanoka Hara, who gives the voice of the protagonist.

Suzume is a 17-year-old girl who, on her way to school by bicycle, runs into the enigmatic Souta, a young man who finds mysterious doors among the ruins left behind by earthquakes. Behind each door hides the monstrous worm that generates the next earthquake. Souta has the key to avoid it, but a sinister kitten turns him into a three-legged child’s chair, with which Suzume embarks on a magical journey through Japan to stop new earthquakes, among poetic touches in a hyper-technical digital environment.

Makoto Shinkai said that when he came up with the script, he first thought of Japanese viewers. “For this film, we didn’t have our eye on the global market, and yet I think this approach can allow us to address themes that are truly universal,” he said. Suzume takes up a typical plot of this filmmaker: a love story between teenagers in a context of natural disasters.

The animation in the Chinese film Art college 1994 is of a different tenor. It was produced over five years by students and faculty at the China Academy of Art (CAA), where Liu is a professor. The film follows a group of art students in China in the mid-1990s, with clashes between idealism and reality, and the way these young people pursue their dreams of creating art while forging friendships or falling in love.

In the projections for the specialized press, Suzume was very applauded and Art college 1994 aroused little enthusiasm. There is little left of the festival – it began on the 16th – until Saturday, when the Golden Bear and the Silver Bears will be unveiled, chosen by an international jury chaired by the American actress Kristen Stewart and of which the Catalan director Carla Simón is a part.