This year, the festival will conclude with a special screening of Angel's Egg, Mamoru Oshii's 1985 cult film on the 40th anniversary of its release.
The plot of this legendary film by Mamoru Oshii takes place in a primordial, disaster-stricken world, a reality in which a mechanical sun shines on the aimless people who are dozing. It is here that two nameless characters meet: a fair-haired girl with sad eyes and a young man who sows anxiety in her. The girl takes care of the mysterious egg, she believes that an angel will hatch from it, the boy persuades her to break the shell. Because this is the only way she can learn the secret inside the egg. Together they traverse a depressing world, made of bronze, ruins, mechanical entrails and artifacts of bygone eras. Until the allegorical ending.
The film by Mamoru Oshii, director of the cult animations "Ghost in the Shell" and the now-famous Polish-Japanese "Avalon" with Malgorzata Foremniak, is a philosophical and ambitious experiment full of intelligent symbolism, using biblical motifs and dreamlike aesthetics. In interviews over the course of four decades, Oshii has repeatedly explained the meaning of individual scenes, the ending, and his fascination with hope as what might be hiding in a mystical egg.
"Angel's Egg" was co-created by Oshii with visual artist Yoshitaka Amano, one of anime's leading creators. The film premiered in 1985, and critics immediately saw it as a sophisticated, ambitious work of art, although as many as four decades passed before "Angel's Egg" received its due recognition around the world. This is reflected in this year's premiere, a digitally restored version of "Angel's Egg" at the Cannes Film Festival.