Directed by Makoto Shinkai • 2004 • Japan
Starring Hidetaka Yoshioka, Masato Hagiwara, Yuuka Nanri

The feature debut from Makoto Shinkai is a haunting and beautiful story of friendship and loss, with stunning visuals and the emotional approach to science fiction that would become the director’s trademark. In an alternate postwar Japan, three teenagers become obsessed with a mysterious tower across the Union border. Hiroki and Takuya work on a makeshift airplane, which they promise their friend Sayuri they will use to visit the tower together someday, but she disappears before it is completed. Several years later, the tower suddenly activates, starting a phenomenon that threatens the world. And the young men now discover that their long-lost friend Sayuri may hold the key to it all.