Here is the new animation from the Japanese film-maker Makoto Shinkai, whose 2016 fantasy Your Name captured moviegoers’ imagination and led him to be thought of as a new master and perhaps even the heir to Hayao Miyazaki himself. It is an absorbing, intriguing, bewildering work: often spectacular and beautiful, like a sci-fi supernatural disaster movie or an essay on nature and politics, but shot through with distinctive elements of fey and whimsical comedy.
Suzume (voiced by Nanoka Hara) is a lonely, smart teenager, who lives with her aunt after the death of her mother. While walking one day she chances across a mysterious young man called Souta (Hokuto Matsumura), who is apparently in search of a door. Fascinated and somehow nettled by this stranger and his eccentric quest, Suzume sets out to follow him, stumbling into abandoned ruins and finding a disturbing door in the middle of nowhere.