All About Lily Chou-Chou

25th Anniversary!

At once grand and intimate, Shunji Iwai’s All About Lily Chou-Chou is one of the great coming-of-age melodramas of the early 21st century – a sublime, singular music-filled portrait of teen alienation. 

A group of interconnected high schoolers worship Lily Chou-Chou, a Bjork-like chanteuse whose music is lush and transcendent. Their private inner lives are only fully revealed in chat rooms, where lies and violence can be washed away by the presence of their goddess and her powerful music. 

Beautifully shot amidst the verdant grasses of suburban Japan, Iwai’s expansive epic elevates adolescent angst into the realm of high art, incredibly prescient in its understanding of how a still-young internet would fundamentally alter youth culture alongside the music that is often the only salvation when the pain and anxiety of teenage life becomes too much to bear.

_{2001, 157 Minutes, Japan, Directed Shunji Iwai, Not Rated}