Entertainment

‘We Are Aliens’ Review: Agonizing, Astounding Animated Gem

Published

3 months ago

May 14, 2026

A frequently stunning work of animation that’s also a haunting portrait of isolation, the destructive insidiousness of bullying and our own capacity for cruelty, Kohei Kadowaki’s formidable feature debut “We Are Aliens” is a film of fascinating layers.

On a narrative level, it tells what, at first glance, may seem like a simple coming-of-age story about two young boys, Gyotaro and Tsubasa, growing close and then drifting apart. However, as the film takes larger leaps through time, what could be an overly familiar story is held up to the light to see what beauty and pain lie underneath it. This is where the breathtaking layers of the animation make it something that rivals the technical splendor and meticulous care of the recent classic, “Your Name.” Just as it is infinitely more grim than that, it finds a similar sense of grace in every frame.

In addition to the film showcasing some of the most remarkable use of rotoscope animation (a technique where live-action footage is used as a reference to make the movements of characters more natural) you’ll ever see, there is just so much tactile detail the animation team captures. In each lonely room, bustling city street or even just a simple drain with flower petals used to show the passage of time, it feels like a rich painting in motion. In every visceral moment of pain and vibrant texture of the landscapes explored, an entire wondrous world comes alive before our eyes, just as it is soon at risk of falling completely apart.

Premiering Thursday in the Directors’ Fortnight Sidebar at the Cannes Film Festival, the film opens with a striking yet subtle sequence where we notably don’t see any faces. Instead, we just hear dialogue like that of a parent and child speaking about the moon before we end up in a cab roaming the city streets alone. Even when we get a glimpse of the driver’s face, he is held at a distance from us just as we look out on the world through his eyes.

Though they then begin to drift closed, tired after what has presumably been a long evening shift, a drop of rain gently descending down his windshield is made to resemble a tear. It provides an evocative hint of how, for all the beauty of the animation on display, this is a film that will be centrally about pain. So much so that the entire experience nearly becomes consumed by it.

When we then flashback to meet Gyotaro and Tsubasa, we initially see the world through the eyes of the latter. He’s a profoundly lonely kid, but the film finds moments of authentic humor in moments like when he tries (and hilariously fails) to hide that he was playing video games one night while his mom was out. This is a kid who not only feels authentic in terms of his mannerisms — though that is also critical — but deeper than that, the film perfectly captures the often-overwhelming wonder and anxiety that can exist within a child.

When Tsubasa begins to go out and explore with Gyotaro, doing a silly walk through a tunnel so that they don’t die or just being in the other’s company when nobody else will, there is a genuine joy to all of their interactions. This will only make the subsequent fracturing of their young friendship that much more annihilating. What begins with a small crack soon expands outwards until everything shatters.

What this entails involves a cruel deception that is only fully understood once the film folds back in on itself, showing many of the events from a slightly different perspective. In this regard, “We Are Aliens” ends up feeling most thematically linked to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Monster” in how it seeks to complicate and challenge our perspective once it makes its big shift. It’s a little more confined than that, only changing perspectives between two characters as opposed to multiple, but it manages to tap into that same sense of shifting emotional tumult.

While the conflict and eventual schism between the two seems like it comes from one being overly playful, resulting in the breaking of an umbrella, it soon grows more complicated. As days turn to months, years and even decades, the two remain inextricably linked even as they also may end up destroying each other. It’s all quite heavy, often teetering on the very edge of pushing things off a cliff into repetitive despair, but it always manages to pull us back from the brink.

More than anything, the reason the film holds together is because of the formal craft on display. Animation is a uniquely malleable cinematic form, and “We Are Aliens” (a title that is in reference to an anxiety one character has while also speaking to a broader feeling of isolation) makes full use of its potential. The piece not only has many more surreal sequences that simply couldn’t exist with a fraction of the same power if it were attempted in live-action, but it also is willing to throw out the rules it was operating under at the drop of a hat.

In particular, there is one sequence near the end that almost descends into outright horror, blurring the lines between reality and a character’s perception of it with daring, disquieting flair. Even as the film itself is an unrelentingly dark one on a tonal level, the beauty it finds in the light of such animation is a wonder to behold.

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Pippa Harris & James WIlson To Headline LFF Industry Forum

Published

5 minutes ago

August 10, 2026

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Hamnet and 1917 producer Pippa Harris and The Zone of Interest producer James Wilson are set to participate in individual spotlight conversations at the 70th BFI London Film Festival’s Industry Forum in October.

Harris, who co-founded Neal Street Productions with Sam Mendes, is currently filming The Beatles – A Four Film Cinematic Event, four separate theatrical biopic films about the British quartet starring Paul Mescal, Joseph Quinn, Barry Keoghan and Harris Dickinson. Mendes is directing the project.

Harris will join LFF for a deep dive into her pioneering work, including The Beatles films, as well as discussing the challenges of development and production and her relationship with filmmakers and talent across her career. Her credits include Oscar, Golden Globe and BAFTA winning films Hamnet and 1917, Oscar and BAFTA nominated Revolutionary Road, British box office hit The Magic Faraway Tree with Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy and Jarhead. Harris is also behind a raft of hit TV productions including Call the Midwife, Penny Dreadful, Britannia, The Hollow Crown and Stuart, A Life Backwards.

Prominent indie producer Wilson, who has been in the business for more than thirty years, will join LFF to discuss his career and bold creative collaborations. He has worked with visionary indie filmmakers to great creative and commercial success on films including Oscar and BAFTA winning The Zone of Interest and Under the Skin, both from Jonathan Glazer, Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab, Aneil Karia’s Hamlet, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s 20,000 Days on Earth and Sophie Fiennes’ The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology.

In the conversation, Wilson will touch on his key career moments from his years at Fox Searchlight Pictures and Film4, where he was a production executive on films such as Sexy Beast and Dancer in the Dark through to the creation of his own company JW Films.

“This year our industry programme puts a spotlight on producers and the vital role they play in shepherding artistic visions from their earliest stages through to the screen,” said BFI London Film Festival Director Kristy Matheson. “I’m delighted that industry colleagues will have the opportunity to hear from Pippa Harris and James Wilson – two esteemed producers whose unique creative careers have given us some of the most memorable and critically acclaimed films of recent years.”

The 70^th edition of the BFI London Film Festival takes place October 7-18, 2026. The Industry Forum Spotlight and Discussion events take place October 8-15.

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Producers Pippa Harris, James Wilson to Talk at London Film Festival

Published

13 minutes ago

August 10, 2026

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Two of the U.K.’s most successful producers will have individual Spotlight Conversations at the 70th BFI London Film Festival‘s Industry Forum this October.

Neal Street Productions co-founder Pippa Harris (The Beatles, Hamnet, 1917) and indie producer James Wilson (The Zone of Interest, The Voice of Hind Rajab) are set to discuss their careers, current projects and navigating the international film and TV market in a rapidly changing landscape.

The LFF Industry Forum welcomes industry delegates from all over the world for a program of “thought-provoking conversations with some of the most exciting practitioners working in the screen industries and networking events with professionals from all over the world.” The full lineup will be announced in mid-September.

Harris will take a deep dive into her work on the hugely ambitious and much-anticipated quartet The Beatles films, directed by her Neal Street co-founder Sam Mendes, and discuss the challenges of development, production and her relationship with talent across her career. A prolific British film producer, her credits include the Oscar, Golden Golden Globe and BAFTA-winning Hamnet and 1917, Oscar and BAFTA-nominated Revolutionary Road, as well as Jarhead and The Magic Faraway Tree, Call the Midwife, Penny Dreadful and more.

Wilson is one of the U.K.’s most successful independent producers. He has worked for three decades in the business — for Fox Searchlight Pictures and Film4 before heading up his own company in the 2000s — and will speak during his Spotlight Conversation about the bold creative collaborations that have shaped his career so far. He has worked on the Oscar and BAFTA-winning The Zone of Interest and Under the Skin from Jonathan Glazer, as well as Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here, Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab and Aneil Karaia’s Hamlet.

“This year our industry programme puts a spotlight on producers and the vital role they play in shepherding artistic visions from their earliest stages through to the screen,” said Kristy Matheson, BFI London Film Festival Director. “I’m delighted that industry colleagues will have the opportunity to hear from Pippa Harris and James Wilson — two esteemed producers whose unique creative careers have given us some of the most memorable and critically acclaimed films of recent years.”

Attendance of international industry professional delegates to the LFF has doubled over the last five years. The 70th BFI London Film Festival, running Oct. 7-18, is set to open with Andrew Scott and Olivia Colman’s Elsinore, and close with Jesse Eisenberg’s musical-comedy The Debut.

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‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Becomes Biggest Hollywood Film In India

Published

54 minutes ago

August 10, 2026

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Spider-Man: Brand New Day is now the highest-grossing Hollywood film of all time in India after taking $10.6M over the weekend for a cumulative $52.8M take.

The film, starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, overtook the record previously held by James Cameron’s 2022 Avatar: The Way Of Water after only 11 days of release. Opening in India on July 30, the day before its global release, the film has not faced much competition, although two big local films – Batwara 1947, starring Sunny Deol, and Nitin Kakkar’s Awarapan 2, starring Emraan Hashmi – are set to open this coming weekend.

It’s been a strong summer for Hollywood films in India, with both Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which opened on July 17, and Obsession, an early summer release on May 29, reportedly grossing more than the INR1B ($10M) benchmark.

Hollywood and other foreign films usually only have a 10-15% share of the Indian market, where local fare dominates. In 2025, international films clocked up a 10% market share with Avatar: Fire And Ash the top-grossing Hollywood film on $26.4M, according to Ormax Media figures. In comparison, the highest-grossing local film last year, Hindi-language action epic Dhurandhar, took $104.8m

In the first half of 2026, international films had an 8% share, with Obsession grossing around $10M (INR1B) and Project Hail Mary on $9.2M (INR880M). Dhurandhar: The Revenge topped the first half chart with $132m.

Overall, India is having an encouraging year at the box office. Ormax Media has reported that revenues for the six months January to June 2026 reached $661.66M (INR63.98B), making it the highest-grossing first half of any year since the pandemic, and surpassing the first half of 2025 by around 10%.

Upcoming films include Geetu Mohandas’ Toxic, starring Yash, scheduled for August 26; and Ramayana: Part 1, which is expected for Diwali in November and was recently picked up by Sony for worldwide distribution.