Adapted from a novel Iwai Shunji had developed through an online forum, All About Lily Chou-Chou follows a group of middle-school students whose lives are shaped by an increasingly digital world. The film’s fractured narrative is populated by anonymous internet message boards devoted to the fictional pop star Lily Chou-Chou as its young characters explore the depths and dangers of life online years before the ubiquity of social media. Confronting difficult subjects—violence, abuse, extreme alienation—it is equally a film about music, memory and the ways people seek beauty in the midst of suffering. "Ether," a transcendent quality that Lily's fans believe exists within her music, captures this ineffable, modern longing. With distinctive digital cinematography, evocative sound design and a hauntingly beautiful score by Kobayashi Takeshi, the film also remains strikingly contemporary more than twenty years after its release—anticipating many of the anxieties surrounding identity, technology and human connection that continue to define our present. – Max Surprenant ‘26