About this episode
At the 76th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival, “A New Dawn” stands out as the only animated feature competing for the Golden Bear. Directed by Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, the film marks his feature debut. It signals a personal turning point for an artist who has long been associated with some of the most influential Japanese animated works of the past decade.
With a background in traditional Japanese painting and animation credits on titles such as “Your Name” by Makoto Shinkai and “In This Corner of the World” by Sunao Katabuchi, Shinomiya arrives in Berlin with a project that synthesises decades of artistic inquiry into place, memory and visual expression.
“I don’t see a strong difference between drawing a traditional Japanese painting and creating animation,” Shinomiya explains. “For me, it is the same act of drawing. The concept has always been about the relationship with a place and what art can express through it.”
From Nihonga to Animation: One Continuous Gesture
Trained in nihonga, a genre deeply rooted in Japanese tradition, Shinomiya has spent over twenty years navigating how to engage with inherited forms without being confined by them. While animation has been a lifelong passion, “I loved anime since I was a child,” he recalls, it took time to feel ready to merge technical mastery with personal vision.
“I believed that with the techniques of Japanese painting, there was something only I could create now,” he says. Presenting A New Dawn in competition brings, in his words, “a sense of relief.”
The film translates painterly sensitivity into movement, transforming landscapes into emotional territories. Once surrounded by lush forests, the Obinata firework factory is now threatened by urban expansion. A road extension will
