In This Corner of the World

An animated film set in Japan during the Second World War. Suzu grows up in a town near Hiroshima. She likes to draw, she is an absent-minded child, and she understands what happens around her by drawing it. At eighteen she is married to a man she has never met and moves to Kure, where the naval base is. Much of the film is housework: rice bought with ration cards, ways of cooking with less and less, gathering weeds in the fields, sewing. The war begins as news from far away and then arrives in the sky. What the narrative holds onto is not the great events but how daily life narrows. In one scene Suzu draws the ships in the harbour and is accused of spying for it. Towards the end an air raid changes her life permanently, and her habit of drawing takes its share of that. The source is Fumiyo Kouno's manga. The production began with independent money raised from its audience. The streets of Kure and Hiroshima of the period were redrawn from archive photographs. Non voices Suzu. Sunao Katabuchi directed. A strong production for anyone who likes films about war from outside the front and Japanese animation. Before you watch, know this: it moves calmly and leaves its real weight to the last section.