“One opening shot lingers on the image of nature’s resilience, as demonstrated by the simple, everyday sight of weeds forcing themselves through cracks in the pavement. But this is a film in which supposedly intangible, unseen objects exert a physical presence in the real world, even including the ‘camera’ of the animators, which audibly rustles through the rooftop flowers as it executes a 3D crane shot of the titular house on the cape.”

With the news that original author Sachiko Kashiwaba has just won the Batchelder prize, over at All the Anime, I write up Shinya Kawatsura’s movie The House of the Lost on the Cape, which has its UK premiere in February.