Camera Japan Rotterdam 2026 Review: CHIMNEY TOWN: FROZEN IN TIME

Six years ago, CGI-special effects specialist Hirota Yuusuke directed his first feature film, the anime Poupelle of Chimney Town, which I happened to like a lot. He just released his second feature, and it is... a sequel to Poupelle of Chimney Town. That first film was based on a series of children's books written by Japanese comedian Nishino Akihiro, and apparently there is plenty more where that came from. Nishino wrote the script for this sequel and helped produce it. The new film is called Chimney Town: Frozen in Time and played at the Camera Japan Festival in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, where I caught up with it.

Chimney Town: Frozen in Time takes place some time after the events in Poupelle of Chimney Town. In the previous film's finale, the young chimney sweep Lubicchi lost his good friend, the animated garbage creature Poupelle. And while Lubicchi continues living with his friends in a (now more cheerful) Chimney Town, he grieves and hopes that some day, through magic, Poupelle might be revived.

When an accident leaves Lubicchi in a near-death state, he gets stuck in a strange netherworld full of clocks. One of the rulers of this realm tells Lubicchi about a gigantic timepiece which stopped ticking. If Lubicchi can manage to get the clock working again, he can go home to Chimney Town. Guided by a local cat, Lubicchi goes on a quest to find a repairman who can fix the big clock, but the only guy able to do so is, like Lubicchi, grief-stricken over a lost loved one. Will Lubicchi be able to convince the man to continue his life? Will he maybe fix his own grief in the process? And will Lubicchi ever return to Chimney Town?

If the synopsis above sounds like a rather heavy-handed way to tell people about death and how to cope with it, it's because... it is. You'll need to look hard to find some subtlety here, and the messages are screamed in your face by Lubicchi all the time, whose voice may make you wish for a volume button while in the cinema. What saves the film is that while Lubicchi is yelling and running, he is doing so in a series of gorgeously rendered environments. Chimney Town is a ludicrously three-dimensional city of intertwining skyscrapers, and the magical netherworld a fairytale landscape of layers, tailor-made to bicycle-fly an ornithopter through. Which is exactly, thankfully, what Lubicchi needs to do at some point. A note about the finale though: as a kid I would have loved how it all resolves. As an adult I'm scratching my head a bit as it seems all the messaging about coping with grief is a bit useless, considering what actually happens. I can't say anything more though without deeply spoiling the story.

Chimney Town: Frozen in Time can be watched separately, you don't need to know about the first film, though it might help a bit with understanding what Lubicchi is so sad about. With its quest-driven storyline, its hardcore yanking at emotional threads, sympathetic side-characters and its beautiful surroundings, this comes closer to a film version of a Final Fantasy game than anything else. I don't mean that as either criticism or endorsement, but merely as a description: this is what it is. Thing is: I love some of the Final Fantasy games. And, niggles and all, I had a great time with Chimney Town: Frozen in Time.

Audiences at the Camera Japan Rotterdam and Amsterdam festival thought so as well, and voted the film into the top 10 of the festival.