July 29, 2008

Production I.G proudly announces the selection of Mamoru Oshii's latest animated feature film The Sky Crawlers for the official competition of the 65th Venice Film Festival, to be held in Venice, Italy from August 27 to September 6, 2008.

Established in 1932, the Venice Film Festival is the world's oldest ongoing film festival.
The Sky Crawlers is one of the 21 films selected from all over the globe to compete for the prestigious Golden Lion award, and Mamoru Oshii is now the only Japanese animation director that had his works selected in competition for Cannes and Venice.

The Sky Crawlers is set in another possible 'now' -a world that has eradicated war. Private war contractors enlist fighter pilots known as Kildren to perform in an endless "war as a show" that people watch on TV and read about in the papers. Kildren don't age, and live in a state of eternal adolescence until they die in the sky. When pilot Yuichi Kannami arrives to his new airbase, the only things he recalls are that he's a Kildren and how to operate a fighter plane. Base commander Suito Kusanagi behaves as if she's been impatiently waiting for him. What does Suito know about Yuichi's past? What are the secrets behind the Kildren?

Mamoru Oshii (Tokyo on August 8, 1951) is one of the most remarkable figures in modern Japanese filmmaking. He is best known worldwide for the epoch-making Ghost in the Shell (1995), that topped the Billboard video chart in the US, and its sequel, Innocence (2004) the first Japanese animated feature film to compete for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. His philosophical speculations and revolutionary visual approach that run throughout his oeuvre had a definitive impact on many film directors, including James Cameron and the Wachowski brothers of The Matrix.

The Sky Crawlers is based on a best-selling novel by writer MORI Hiroshi, that sold more than 900,000 copies in Japan alone. After reading the novel, Director Oshii praised it as "a work that should be made into a movie for young people now. Clothing, food and housing are in abundance in our modern society, and yet we carry an unfulfilled vacuum in our hearts. It is time to face this new perception to our existence through the Kildren, who live indefinitely in eternal adolescence, and this theme should be dealt with now."

SCREENING SCHEDULE AT VENICE 65

PRESS SCREENING
Date: September 2, 2008 (Tue)
Time: 19:00
Cinema Hall: Sala Perla

PROFESSIONAL SCREENING
Date: September 2, 2008 (Tue)
Time: 22:30
Cinema Hall: PALALIDO

OFFICIAL SCREENING
Date: September 3, 2008 (Wed)
Time: 22:00
Cinema Hall: SALA GRANDE

PUBLIC SCREENING 1
Date: September 4, 2008 (Thu)
Time: 13:15
Cinema Hall: PALABIENNALE

PUBLIC SCREENING 2
Date: September 5, 2008 (Fri)
Time: 21:30
Cinema Hall: GIORGIONE

For further information, please check the 65th Venice Film Festival official website:
http://www.labiennale.org/en/

The Sky Crawlers official website and trailers (Japanese only):
http://sky.crawlers.jp/

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