For the Animations section of Beijing Film Panorama at the 12th Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF), each of the animated films to be screened will cause a sensation and, absolutely, the latest must-watch masterpiece!

INU-OH, a new hit directed by Japanese animation genius Masaaki Yuasa and adapted from Hideo Furukawa’s novel Tales of the Heike: INU-OH, tells the story of the friendship between Inu-Oh, a noh performer, and Tomona, a blind musician who plays the biwa, during the Muromachi period. Creative, imaginative, and quite catching, the film features a stellar production lineup, with manga artist Taiyo Matsumoto as the character designer, Akiko Nogi as the screenwriter, and Otomo Yoshihide as the music producer. It was selected for the Horizons section at the 78th Venice International Film Festival last year. Never should you miss the film!

Dozens of Norths (4K UHD) is a new experimental work by Japanese independent animation director Koji Yamamura, and won the award in the Contrechamp section at this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

In 2002, Koji Yamamura rose to fame with Mt. Head, making a clean sweep of the awards at the most important international animation film festivals such as Annecy, Zagreb, and Hiroshima. His animation style is unique, often with a stream of consciousness and surrealism, and his new work dialogue-less Dozens of Norths is also full of thoughts on experimentalism and existentialism, taking us into the northern kingdom full of coldness and strangeness.

Perlimps and No Dogs or Italians Allowed are also two works that made a stunning appearance at this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where Perlimps was screened at Annecy in official selection as a special event, while No Dogs or Italians Allowed scooped the Jury Award for a feature.

Perlimps, a new film by Brazilian director Alê Abreu after nearly ten years in the making, is set in a natural landscape and tells a story of friendship. Taking childhood as the land of promise to return from the current chaos of the world is undoubtedly what we need most nowadays.

His previous film The Boy and the World won the 43rd Annie Award for Best Animated Feature–Independent and was shortlisted for the 88th Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature. Unlike the minimalism of The Boy and the World, Alê Abreu adds an abundance of colors to Perlimps, and gives the screen a sense of depth and dynamics in a hand-drawn way. He confessed that Studio Ghibli movies had a far-reaching influence on him, and at the same time, he also drew inspiration from a huge array of paintings, especially Perlimps referring to Henri Matisse’s paper cut-outs.

No Dogs or Italians Allowed is a unique stop-motion animation that tells the story of an Italian immigrant family. French director Alain Ughetto interweaves his family memories with historical evocation to create this “private epic”.

For the film, Alain Ughetto, who used stop-motion animation as early as in his first animated feature film, Jasmine, even chose to use puppets to create the characters and bulked the details out with everyday supplies such as charcoal, broccoli, chestnuts, and sugar cubes. No Dogs or Italians Allowed also features the famous Italian film composer Nicola Piovani (Life Is Beautiful) as the music producer, whose soundtrack adds a whole gamut of nostalgia and romance to the film’s coarse undertones.

It is noteworthy that, in addition to the Animations section, Oshii Mamoru’s classic animation Ghost in the Shell will be presented in both 4K and IMAX. Without further ado, ticket grabbing is the way to go!