Closing session: Keenie 166 + Nezumikozō Jirokichi

Program:

KEENIE 166 (Blanca Bonet, Spain, 2024, 14’)
Civilization has been devastated by a general amnesia. Desperate to preserve some memory, humans turn to the Xirst clinic, a center run by tiny beings specialized in recovering the vestiges of their memories: the keenies. Nº166, a low-ranking keenie, discovers that the patient assigned to him is being held against her will. Disobeying the rules, he decides to deactivate her treatment at the risk of his own life.

> Winner project of the ANIMARIO Award for the production of an animated short film in the last edition. This project was awarded with the provisional title of Aki. Since its creation in 2018, this call open to animators of Spanish nationality or resident in Spain has received nearly 150 projects.
> World Premiere
> With the presence of Blanca Bonet and the Tourmalet Films team. 

NEZUMIKOZŌ JIROKICHI (JIROKICHI THE RAT, Rintarō, France, 2023, 24’)
While the city of Edo is plunged into darkness, a man emerges from the attic of a house. He is the famous Jirokichi, called The Rat, a virtuous bandit who steals from the rich to distribute to the poor. Taking advantage of the poor woman's distress, some yakuza try to expose the true identity of The Rat. Animated medium-length film directed by Rintarō (Metropolis) and with art direction by Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) from an unpublished script by Sadao Yamanaka, acclaimed Japanese director of the 1930s who died at the age of only 28. Yamanaka was a contemporary of Kenji Mizoguchi and Mikio Naruse and a personal friend of Yasujiro Ozu. Of his filmography only three films remain, but he is considered an essential figure in the transition from silent to sound and the definitive promoter of the jidaigeki or Japanese historical genre, which he combined with comedy and a very personal style that Rintarō has tried to preserve with this adaptation.

> Not recommended under 16 years old.