The Sky Crawlers / Sukai kurora
Friday, December 12, 2008 at 7pm and 9:30pm
NEW YORK PREMIERE

Winner of the Future Film Festival’s Digital Award during this year’s Venice Film Festival, The Sky Crawlers is full of Oshii’s intriguing blend of philosophy and science fiction, but his greatest achievement is the brilliantly conceived and executed sequences of aerial combat, creating a vortex that confounds the differences between humans and machines, past and present, life and death. Co-presented by New York-Tokyo and Sony Pictures.

Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) is a master of contemporary Japanese animé who creates in his newest film a haunting tale of the clash between duty and desire. In the not-so-distant future, the nations of the world have channeled their war-like tendencies into a constant battle between fighter pilots known as Kildren, who are destined to live in a state of perpetual youth—unless, of course, they are shot down. When one of them, Yuichi, is assigned to a new base, he is sure that he’s seen the base’s beautiful commander, Suito, somewhere before. His search for the link leads him into his past, which seems more mysterious the more he remembers.

The Sky Crawlers / Sukai kurora
Mamoru Oshii, Japan, 2008; 122m