This one doesn't grab you, it just sits down next to you and waits. Sugii shoots empty space like it's the point: the crystalline riverbed of the Milky Way, the long silences between Giovanni and Campanella, station signs written in actual Esperanto that nobody stops to explain. Hosono's score does most of the emotional heavy lifting, and it never once tells you how to feel. Then the ticket. Giovanni's is the only one that lets him go anywhere, and the moment you understand why everyone else has to get off at the Southern Cross, the whole gentle thing turns into a knife. The scorpion's fire, the bird catcher, the empty seat by the window. You'll be fine right up until you realize Giovanni still hasn't gotten the milk home to his mother.

Giovanni is a lonely boy on the edge of a small country town, an outcast at school whose mother is bedridden and whose father has not come home from work on a fishing boat. His one friend is Campanella, the mayor's son. On the night of the Festival of Stars, while daydreaming on a hill, Giovanni sees a steam train floating in the sky. He climbs aboard and finds Campanella already riding it. Together they cross the Milky Way, stopping at stations among the constellations and meeting strange travelers. Adapted from a Kenji Miyazawa story and drawn with its characters as cats, the film is a slow, dreamlike fantasy where reality and imagination blur and the trip hints at the journey through life.