Goodbye

For two boys Roma and Toto, aged 15 and 16, this will be final year of their hidden secret gathering place "Don Glees" as they will all most likely seeking separate careers going separate ways. For this final year a third teenager, Drop, has joined them - he's new to the group but brimming with enthusiasm for one-in-lifetime experiences.

So Roma is pushed into blowing his entire allowance on a camera drone for an ambitious attempt at a good close-up film of a fireworks display, but events on night do not go according to plan.

This will force them into an adventure deep into the forest without detailed maps and scant phone coverage, taking them through tragedy, terror, heart-ache, and culminating with a truly epic closure.

I watched this at "Scotland Loves Animation" festival in October 2022 and out of 4 entries for the Audience Award - this the only one I felt compelled to vote for. With an excellent script and visuals, intelligently nuanced characters, plot and storyline, this will keep me alert in future for any more work by the writer and director Atsuko Ishizuka.