For young people around the world, music is often the only salvation when pain and suffering becomes too much to bear. Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara) is in 8th grade and worships Lily Chou-Chou, a Björk-like singer whose lush and transcendent music provides the perfect escape from his brutal surroundings. Yuichi also finds solace as the moderator of an online chat room dedicated to his pop idol, but as his real life nightmare of teenage prostitution, crime and bullying grows more untenable, will Lily be enough to save him from isolation and despair?
Winner of the CICAE Panorama Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU is "one of the most haunting, viciously honest coming-of-age films in recent memory." (LA Weekly)
DIRECTED BY SHUNJI IWAI
JAPAN | 2001 | JAPANESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
Alliance of Women Film Journalists Selection! Read an excerpt from Marilyn Ferdinand's AWFJ review
In enfant terrible Takeshi Kitano’s explosive second feature film, Masaki (Yûrei Yanagi) is an unassuming gas station attendant and amateur baseball player for underdog team The Eagles. After he enrages a local yakuza, setting off a feud between the gangsters and his coach, Masaki heads to Okinaw...
Natalia, a nun from a remote Russian monastery, comes to Moscow 17 years after the terrorist attack on the Dubrovka Theatre. She has been sent there to organize a memorial evening for the victims of the attack that took place in October 2002. We soon learn that Natalia and her family were witness...