Of Brothers and Sisters

In his latest partly hand-drawn and partly digitally animated film Mirai (Mirai no Mirai, 2018), the Japanese director and animator Mamoru Hosoda sticks to the dual narrative structure he has perfected in his previous films. Mirai is divided between the objective world and the many alternative worlds that the four-year-old protagonist starts to accesses after his little sister is born. As he is not coping well with the consequential loss of attention, his family members in the alternative worlds from the past and the future teach him about his emotions and the reasons for them. Hosoda conveys the shifting atmospheres of the numerous worlds through elaborately hand-painted backgrounds and a meticulous use of colours.

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