She and Her Cat and Voices of a Distant Star were works by Japanese animator and director Makoto Shinkai, who had been a name in the animation space for decades. The films Your Name and Weathering With You helped turn international viewers onto his filmography. His next movie, called "Suzume Locking Up the Doors", is due out later this year for Japanese theaters, and it looks just as good as his previous two films.
The film stars a teenage girl named Suzume, whose ordinary life in the quiet town of Kyushu is suddenly upended when she comes across a single door standing upright in the ruins of an abandoned hot spring. She opens the door and it leads to similar doors popping up all over Japan and hurting anyone who tries to open them. With the help of a young man who was already looking for one of these doors, it is up to Suzume to close them.
Shinkai told io9 that the film's story would be about how to close the many doors we left open, and that hopefully viewers would leave the film thinking about that. The film received a key visual with a picture of Suzume holding a chair and standing in front of a door.
Kenichi Tsuchiya, who previously directed the animation for Weathering and Your Name, will be the animation director for the film. Shinkai and the art director for his last two films, Takumi Tanji, are back together in this film. After collaborating with Shinkai on the scores for Your Name and Weathering, it's not clear if the Japanese rock band will return to handle the music for Suzune.
There is no current time frame given for a western release of the movie, which will be in theaters in Japan on November 11.
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