Yoshifumi Kondō (1950–1998)

Studio Ghibli’s best -kept secret replaces screenwriter Hayao Miyazaki’s usual fantasy worlds with a romantic teen drama set in the Tokyo suburbs – but it’s no less magical for that. It’s the story of Shizuku, a teen bookworm inspired to find her own artistic expression by a violin maker, a statue of a cat, and John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’. Ghibli’s painterly textures keep the delicate emotions of this minor-key treasure from tumbling into schmaltz, all the more moving because first-time director Yoshifumi Kondô died shortly after.
-Simon Kinnear… (meer)