Four directors, four countries, one language: each film bends animation toward something you've never quite seen before. A girl and a boy negotiate with a robot over what matters. A child says goodbye to something that shaped them. Strings become movement become meaning. The ocean speaks in ways only animation can translate. This is what happens when you let artists from different continents use the same medium to say what their home already knows. You watch strangers speak directly to you in a language that isn't words.
Four interlinked short films make up this anthology ONA, made by filmmakers across Japan, China and the United States and mixing science fiction with fantasy while touching on love, life, conflict and human nature. The segments are A Girl Meets a Boy and a Robot from Shinichirou Watanabe, Zaijian, Xiaoou from Li Wei, Dance of Strings from Shuuhei Morita, and Haiyang Zhi Yan from Richard Taylor and Weng Ming. In the opening story, an amnesiac girl roams a wrecked world where automated machines keep working though almost no people remain. She joins up with a friendly robot that has also lost its memory, and in the city the pair meet a brave young man living wild who is hunting for the Crystal of Time.
