The Colours Within

Totsuko sees people as colours. When she forms a band with a girl who shines blue and a boy who loves music, she finds a voice of her own in Naoko Yamada's vibrant anime feature.

Rehearsing together, Kimi, Rui and Totsuko find that music holds what they can't say out loud, and their friendship starts to reshape what each of them expects of school, of family and of one another.
Curator's Note
The Colours Within brings together two of anime's most distinctive filmmakers: director Naoko Yamada and screenwriter Reiko Yoshida, whose earlier work together includes A Silent Voice (2016). 
Yamada's impressionistic animation turns Totsuko's way of seeing into a visual language of shifting light and tone. Yoshida's screenplay gives the three characters room to reach each other through music rather than explanation. Neither rushes the story, and neither reaches for the crisis an adolescent friendship film usually needs. 
In an industry where women remain underrepresented behind the scenes, the film is a case for what changes when women shape stories about young women.