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Film · 1988 · Anime
Grave of the Fireflies
Directed by Isao Takahata
1988
Japan
★ 8.4 editorial score
Nobody recommends this one lightly: Takahata put two children through the last months of the war in Japan, and being animated makes it harder to bear, not easier.
“A war story as wrenching as any live-action movie, and it has reduced many a viewer to tears — this one included. Based on Akiyuki Nosaka's semi-autobiographical novel, it is focused on a teenager and his sister struggling to survive at the tail end of the second world war, and it records their plight with unsentimental intimacy.”
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