Poupelle of Chimney Town Sets Its Sights on The Sky and Beyond

Jan 05,2022

Akihiro Nishino's best-selling book turned movie, Poupelle of Chimney Town, follows a starry-eyed young boy, Lubicchi, who spends his days cleaning chimneys hoping to one day see “stars” through the smoke. This interest was instilled in him by his father, who spent much of his time talking to the townspeople of the stars through kamishibai, or paper play. However, no one believed him as the town and the sky are always gray from the smoke. Although his father mysteriously disappeared one day, Lubicchi never gave up on the hope to see those mysterious lights in the sky.

On Halloween, he meets a garbage person named Poupelle, who is a literal sentient anthropomorphic pile of rubbish given life. Together, they slowly inch towards the answer of whether there are stars or not. Yet, general disbelief from the townspeople and hostile Inquisitors, the town's police force, leave Poupelle and Lubicchi isolated in their search. In a surprising turn of events, the duo begins making progress when they receive help from an underground resident.

The movie opened in theaters on December 30 in New York and Los Angeles, and will premiere nationwide on January 7. Originally, the movie's English dub premiered at the Animation is Film Festival in late October last year, where creator Akihiro Nishino surprised the crowd by announcing a sequel for the movie at a virtual Q&A.

Even though the movie is based on a picture book, Mr. Nishino had already written the script since he wanted to make a film in the first place. The picture book was coming from episodes and shots from the script. When they decided to move forward with producing the film, they developed from there. But the visual references are from the book.

The picture book was a great reference. However, the visuals for the film were made from scratch. It's difficult delivering 250 years of history for this town into a movie. I discussed with the production designer, Mr. Sato, for this film. For instance, where Lubicchi lives, and the design for the town.

Let's start with the character of Poupelle. He's not perfect; he can be pretty weak at times, but at the same time, somehow being together with Lubicchi gives him courage. I thought, who can pull off all that feeling well? I watched a lot of TV variety shows and came across Masataka Kubota. As for Lubicchi, he believes in the stars behind the clouds. But he needed to have a specific tone for his dialogue and his character. Now, who can pull off the dialogue and words organically? Who would be perfect for this character in Japan? Eventually I concluded that it would have to be Mana Ashida.

Those two are great actors. Without me having to give them a lot of direction, they already understood who the characters are and were so deeply invested in them. Poupelle is a fictional garbage man, right? You wouldn't know how he would speak from just that image. But Mr. Kubota did a great job building that character from scratch, and he perfectly understood the character.

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