DRAGONFLY | Omeleto

A mother remembers. In 1956 in Japan, Sumiko is a young girl who spots a dragonfly and chases it to a family shrine in the forest. Her mother Yoshiko finds her there, and it unlocks a past chapter in the family's history: how she survived the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945, and how it affected the family going forward. Directed and written by Julia Morizawa, this lyrical yet gripping dramatic short uses the imaginative fluidity and boundless, free-flowing imagery of animation to explore a hidden, devastating chapter in a family's history. The story traverses time, place and dimensions, capturing not just the curiosity of a young girl learning about her family but how the family was affected by a tragic but little-discussed incident during World War II, when the U.S. military dropped over 1,600 tons of napalm-filled bombs on Tokyo, killing over 100,000 people and rendering one million people homeless. This terrible event devastated many families, including Sumiko's, but is rarely mentioned or discussed in both history books and among the family. But when her daughter discovers his chapter of family history, Yoshiko must confront that historical trauma once again. The storytelling begins with an initial rush of childhood magic, with a charming musical score, childlike stylized lines and textures and fresh, vibrant colors. All feels peaceful and even pastoral. But as Sumiko locates a shrine in the woods, the narrative segues into the past, the color shifting into muted tones and blacks and whites. We meet Sumiko's mother at an earlier time in life, with a young baby and a job working in the factories during the war. Yoshiko and the other workers are nervous about news of an atomic weapon being developed by the U.S., but they figure that it will be some time until it can come to fruition. In the meantime, they work and live as ordinary people do. Little do they know, however, that other weapons can be deployed at cataclysmic scales, which they discover when Tokyo is firebombed. The bombs are terrible, exploding fire everywhere and burning people alive. Many people flee to the river, hoping to escape heat and flame. Sumiko's mother, carrying her young son, flees as well, encountering horrible death and destruction in the escape. The horrific nature of the bombing is not shied away from, unflinching as it is in its intensity, from the vivid images of people on fire to the dense, buzzing sound design full of screams and explosions. The stylized graphic style does spares us graphic gruesomeness, but not the truth of what happened: how Sumiko lost a sibling she never got to know, in an event she has never heard about until now. It's a wrenching event, one that casts a long shadow, even when Yoshiko survived and moved forward. The Tokyo firebombing had the highest immediate death toll of any air raid during World War II. As lyrical, beautiful and tender as it is, DRAGONFLY -- based on the writer-director's own family history -- asks us not to forget this history, especially as the number of those who are old enough to remember directly begins to dwindle. It ends on a note of hope, however, as Sumiko comes to know the sibling she lost in a unique way. In the knowing and acceptance of what happened, Yoshiko finds some healing and peace, even if she can never forget what happened. DRAGONFLY. Courtesy of Julia Morizawa at https://dragonflyshortfilm.com.