Penguin Highway

Aoyama is in the fourth grade, records everything in a notebook and treats the world as a research subject. One day penguins start appearing in his town, and their source is a young woman who works at the dental clinic. The boy sets out to solve it, but the film is not about the solution; it is about the feeling he cannot name toward her. Hiroyasu Ishida keeps the animation crisp and cool, and the light, the water and the empty afternoons of the town supply its texture. The source is Tomihiko Morimi's novel, which is also where the refusal to fully explain the fantastic element comes from. It starts like a children's film and ends unexpectedly melancholy. Who it is for: viewers who like calm, strange Japanese animation about growing up. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a clean explanation, since the mystery is left deliberately open.