Summer Wars

WINNER - BEST ANIMATED FEATURE, Japanese Academy Prize
Official Selection: Berlin, Annecy, Fantastic Fest

This Japanese animation follows Kenji, a teenage math prodigy recruited by his secret crush Natsuki for the ultimate summer job – passing himself off as Natsuki’s boyfriend for four days during her grandmother’s 90th birthday celebration. But when Kenji solves a 2,056 digit math riddle sent to his cell phone, he unwittingly breaches the security barricade protecting Oz, a globe-spanning virtual world where millions of people and governments interact through their avatars, handling everything from online shopping and traffic control to national defense and nuclear launch codes. Now a malicious AI program called the Love Machine is hijacking Oz accounts, growing exponentially more powerful and sowing chaos and destruction in its wake!

This intriguingly intelligent cyberpunk/science fiction is a visual tour-de-force, with the amazing world of Oz as the highlight. Like the Internet as conceived by pop artist Takashi Murakami, Oz is a hallucinatory pixel parade of cool avatar designs, kung fu jackrabbits, toothy bears, and a bursting rainbow of colors.

“[Filmmaker Mamoru] Hosoda adds enough dimensions to his characters and kinetic battles that the serene real world seems like a dream state.” (Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle)

“There's a lovely, unhurried quality to Mr. Hosoda's storytelling, which nicely matches the clean, classically composed images of his outer story.” (Rachel Saltz, New York Times)

“Celebrates togetherness and bravery as much as binary-mathematics expertise.” (Nick Schager, Time Out New York)