Based on “The Imaginary”
by A.F. Harrold
A.F. Harrold is an English poet, performer and children’s author. Born in Sussex in 1975, he began writing poetry in his teenage years. After graduating from Reading University, he became a full-time poet after trying to be a bookseller. He won the Cheltenham Literature Festival All-Stars Poetry Slam in 2007 and was Poet-in-Residence at Glastonbury Festival in 2008. In 2012, Bloomsbury published his first children's novel, “Fizzlebert Stump: The Boy Who Ran Away from the Circus (and Joined the Library)” followed by five more books in the Fizzlebert Stump series. “The Imaginary” (2014, illustrated by Emily Gravett) won the UKLA Book Award and his sci-fi comedy novel, “Greta Zargo and the Amoeba Monsters from the Middle of the Earth” (2018, illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton), won the Teach Primary First News Funny Award.
Director
Yoshiyuki Momose
Animation Director. Yoshiyuki Momose joined Studio Ghibli after working as Key Animator on Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies (1988), then was in charge of storyboard drawings for Takahata’s Only Yesterday (1991) and Pom Poko (1994) and computer-generated portions of Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke (1997), and was a leading Key Animator of Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001) and sequence director for Takahata’s My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999). After debuting as the director of a theatrical feature with the Ghiblies episode 2 (2002), Momose was in charge of scene design for Takahata’s final masterpiece, The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013). At Studio Ponoc, he directed Life Ain’t Gonna Lose, one of the three short films in Studio Ponoc’s anthology Modest Heroes – Ponoc Short Films Theatre, Volume 1 (2018). His latest work as director is Tomorrow’s Leaves (2021), an animated short film created in collaboration with the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage.
Producer
Yoshiaki Nishimura
Founder and Producer, Studio Ponoc. At Studio Ghibli, Yoshiaki Nishimura was involved in production of director Hayao Miyazaki’s “Let’s Eat at Home” series of TV commercials for House Foods (2004) and advertising of Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), Tales from Earthsea (2006), and Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea (2008). Nishimura is the producer of Isao Takahata’s final masterpiece The Tale of The Princess Kaguya (2013) and When Marnie Was There (2014) (each nominated as Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards). Now the CEO and producer of Studio Ponoc which he founded in April 2015, Nishimura produced the feature film Mary and The Witch’s Flower (2017), the short-film anthology Modest Heroes - Ponoc Short Films Theatre, Volume 1 (2018), and Tomorrow’s Leaves (2021), an animated short film created in collaboration with the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage.
Studio Ponoc is the animation studio founded in 2015 by former Studio Ghibli producer Yoshiaki Nishimura (nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for The Tale of The Princess Kaguya and When Marnie Was There). The name “Studio Ponoc” comes from the Croatian word “ponoć”, which means “midnight” or the beginning of a new day, reflecting founder Nishimura’s goal of a new start for animation created in Japan. The studio produced and released worldwide director Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s Mary and The Witch’s Flower in summer 2017 as its first animated feature film and created a new production label – “Ponoc Short Films Theatre” – in 2018, releasing Modest Heroes – Ponoc Short Films Theatre, Volume 1, the first anthology of short animated films from Studio Ponoc comprising a grand fantasy adventure, a moving human drama of love, and an action spectacle. In 2021, the studio created Tomorrow’s Leaves, commissioned by the Olympic Foundation for Culture and Heritage and the world’s first animated short film inspired by the Olympic Values. The studio is currently producing several animated feature films, with its next feature, The Imaginary, arriving in cinema in Japan on 15 December 2023 and around the world in 2024.
