Incinerator

The transition from childhood to adolescence is a vulnerable and confusing time for most people. This is certainly true for ten-year-old Kozue, who grows up on the outskirts of Tokyo. Her everyday life is marked by frequent loneliness. At school, she is an outsider, and her quiet, passive nature makes it difficult for her to connect with the other children. At home, she finds little comfort: her mother is constantly overworked, while her father has succumbed to alcoholism. She spends most of her free time wandering alone through the neighbourhood, quietly observing the world around her. Boredom and isolation are her constant companions. She spends the summer immersed in solitary rituals, most notably stealing objects and burning them in the incinerator behind her school. Until one day, an older boy named Jinta appears in her classroom to perform his kamishibai, a traditional Japanese form of storytelling using illustrated paper cards. His performance awakens something deeply buried within Kozue: a hope for closeness, connection, and perhaps even love.