A New Dawn is a visually breathtaking meditation on legacy and environmental loss whose painterly beauty and thematic ambition ultimately outshine a narrative that keeps the audience at an emotional distance.
Directed by Yoshitoshi Shinomiya, A New Dawn is a Japanese–French animated feature that premiered in Competition at the Berlinale – the only animated movie to feature in this year’s Competition. As someone who doesn’t usually follow animations closely, I was excited at the prospect of watching A New Dawn on the big screen.
The story follows a trio of young friends who barricade themselves inside their family’s soon-to-be-demolished fireworks factory-home as they attempt to recreate a mythical firework. A New Dawn intertwines family legacy, environmental change and the pressures of urban development and does it all with utterly breathtaking visuals. Each frame is a true work of art, all washed-out blue-green palettes emphasising the decay and melancholy of the plot. There’s an amazing attention to detail even in the very background of each and every shot – you could certainly pause at any moment and hang the image on your wall.
Narratively, though, I found it a little bewildering. For the first stretch I was genuinely convinced the projection had started mid-film: relationships were unclear, key events seemed to have happened off-screen, and I couldn’t work out who was related to whom or why anyone was doing what they were doing. As it continued, my confusion was never entirely resolved. Motivations shifted, connections remained implicit, and the emotional stakes never fully landed because the film never seemed to ground them clearly.
It was oddly reassuring to discover, outside the cinema, that other audience members had had the same experience — we ended up piecing together fragments of the plot in the snowy Berlin afternoon, trying to make sense of the narrative. It even raised the question of whether the subtitles might have contributed to the confusion, though the structural opacity felt deeper than translation issues.
What does come through is the thematic ambition: generational fracture, the disappearance of rural industries, climate anxiety, and the violence of urban expansion. The soon-to-be-demolished factory and encroaching road project are symbols of a broader environmental collapse, while the mythical “Shuhari” firework serves as a possible metaphor for artistic, traditional and cultural legacy. These ideas, however, remain more atmospheric than integrated fully in the script or plot points.
In the end, A New Dawn was a beautiful cinematic experience, yet emotionally distant and almost impossible to recount coherently afterwards! A film to admire more than to follow, and one that left me both awed and a little frustrated.
Our team is on the ground at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, running from February 12th to 22nd, 2026.
