All About Lily Chou-Chou

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Directed by Iwai Shunji, 2001. Adapted from a novel Iwai Shunji had developed through an online forum, All About Lily Chou-Chou follows a group of middle-school students whose lives are shaped by an increasingly digital world. The film’s fractured narrative is populated by anonymous internet message boards devoted to the fictional pop star Lily Chou-Chou as its young characters explore the depths and dangers of life online years before the ubiquity of social media. Confronting difficult subjects—violence, abuse, extreme alienation—it is equally a film about music, memory and the ways people seek beauty in the midst of suffering. "Ether," a transcendent quality that Lily's fans believe exists within her music, captures this ineffable, modern longing. With distinctive digital cinematography, evocative sound design and a hauntingly beautiful score by Kobayashi Takeshi, the film also…