She came from Tokyo to present Goodbye, DonGlee!, the first feature film entirely written and directed by him and which – a masterstroke – finds himself among the ten films in official competition at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2022. Atsuko Ishizuka seems however to take the case with calm and even has fun remembering that she was never, as a child, a spectator of animated series and cartoons. And that, later, the student who graduated from the University of the Arts in Aichi, the prefecture where she was born in 1981, was more interested in theater and music, even design.
It was a job at the Japanese studios of films and animated series Madhouse that changed the game and decided for her. “As soon as I arrived, I was asked to make small children’s song pellets for the national channel NHK, she confides. I had no experience in the field of animation, so on this first project, I put a lot of pressure on myself. But I believe, deep down, that I’m reaping the benefits, and that’s why I’m here today. »
Initiatory story
Atsuko Ishizuka continued her career at Madhouse, worked on several television series, including No Game No Life (2014) and A Place Further than the Universe (2018), collaborated in the production and staging of films in various formats, before carrying out her own feature film, Goodbye, DonGlees!. An initiatory story that features three young boys traveling together, for one summer, from the deep forests of Japan to the Icelandic glaciers.
A story of friendship, life and death around a treasure whose origin is in the personal history of the director. “A few years ago, my mother was told she had cancer and that she might die. I am the third of a family, and my two older brothers – both reliable and solid men – still live in my native region. However, it was to me, who nevertheless moved away to go and live in Tokyo, that my mother had chosen to entrust with her property. This decision puzzled me. I said to myself that perhaps I represented something of her, something accomplished as a woman. This “treasure” that she entrusted to me revealed my own identity and was a founding experience for me. »
This is the story that Atsuko Ishizuka wanted to tell (whose mother today is fine, she insists on specifying), through one of the characters in her film, Roma, a young boy ignorant of the vast world who will discover its greatness thanks to a treasure entrusted to him. Grandeur that the director takes care to magnify by decorations worked like engravings. “I was very attached to drawing, on the one hand, very realistic animation characters typical of manga, with their facial expressions and their sometimes comical expressions. Then, on the other side, decors that have depth and are close to painting, in order to share with the viewer the emotions felt by the characters during their journey. We had to be able to feel the atmosphere, the air they breathe. Putting these two aesthetics together created a rather particular visual effect. » An air of modernity, a dynamic cross indeed Goodbye, DonGlees!.
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