Notes from a small Japanese town

A man, fishing in his boat, catches a blue lady’s shoe floating along the river. Did it belong to Andrea, the Polish berry-picker, who fled from the tyranny of the Blueberry King, supported by the Blueberry King’s own son, the poetic weakling Stig?

After a great flood, Pää floats down the river on the roof of his house. Soon he is joined by Nif, and together they travel downstream and out into the ocean. Along the way they meet many peculiar creatures.

In the animated short film Hello Robot!, we follow a girl in a desolate world as she finds an abandoned robot in a cave. Luck is short though, as batteries are hard to come by.

Spooky Wednesday is a radio show that airs every other Wednesday from 10 p.m. until the witching hour, two hours later. In the show, listeners can call in and share their own experiences, or those of someone they know, with the supernatural. Usually, it’s about some cousin from Gällivare who has seen a shadow in the corner of his eye or heard a mysterious noise once. But this Wednesday, everything is different. Frightened listeners calling in have all experienced terrifying phenomena throughout the evening. There have been sightings in the city of a revenant, apparently heading straight for the radio studio.

Pa-zu is the local mascot who stayed behind when his childhood friends moved south. Out of love for the place he grew up, he has endured a lot, as he pushes through adversity towards his goal of one day becoming a successful yuru-chara, or mascot character.

A red shoe floats down the river.

A lonely guardian of land, longing for a companion in life, battles uncomfortable dates and long distances in his search for love in this short puppet film.