Directed by Naoko Yamada • 2018 • Japan
Starring Atsumi Tanezaki, Nao Toyama, Ayaka Asai

Luminous hand-drawn animation, stirring music, and fairy-tale imagination combine in this uniquely intimate, ineffably moving coming-of-age story from renowned anime director Naoko Yamada (A SILENT VOICE). High-school bandmates Mizore and Nozomi prepare to play a complex musical duet, “Liz and the Blue Bird,” for oboe and flute. Though they play beautifully together and have been best friends since childhood, they find their relationship begins to buckle under the pressures of both rehearsals and their looming graduation. Evocatively interspersed with their story is the fantasy tale of Liz, drawn like a storybook and contrasting beautifully with the crisply-rendered realism of the school.