A tanuki raises a human child as her own, and the film never makes a spectacle of the impossible choice, just lives inside it. The transformation into a mother isn't magic to marvel at. It's the daily quiet of someone learning to be needed by another person. What breaks you is how natural it becomes, how completely Hal stops being a creature and starts being a mother, one ordinary moment at a time.
Hal is a tanuki, a raccoon-like animal, who comes across a human infant that someone has left behind. Hal gives the little boy the name Pal and chooses to take on the shape of a human mother in order to bring him up. The result is a feature-length adventure film centered on an unusual family, and it had its premiere at the Tokyo International Film Festival in October 2011.
