Little Amelie or the Character of Rain

For the first three years of life, a child is closer to the divine than the human. That’s the belief of baby Amelie, at least, born to Belgian parents stationed in Japan in the early 1960s. Her first, transcendent, taste of Belgian chocolate (a gift from visiting Granny) seals the deal: Amelie is a god. She’s also something of a monster — compelling her parents to engage a nanny, Nishio-San, to preserve their sanity and restore order to the household. It’s Nishio-San whose influence will shape the evolution of the toddler to the next stage of childhood.

Adapted from Amelie Nothomb’s 2000 memoir The Character of Rain and influenced by both western and Japanese aesthetics, this delicately animated feature is robustly amusing, shaded with profound emotional truths.

+ short film Eiru (Giovanna Ferrari, Ire, 2025) 13 min

Charming… sometimes profound… visually engrossing and thought-provoking fare that ranges daringly across emotions ranging from pure delight to fear and horror.

Jonathan Holland, Screen International

A uniquely childlike meditation on all of the beauty that life has to offer, and on all of the loss which makes that beauty worth cherishing while you can. Little Amélie and the Character of Rain isn’t a moment too short for its material, and yet its brevity allows it to maintain that delicate balance between joy and grief — discovery and heartache — from start to finish.

David Ehrlich, Indiewire

A mesmerizing, vibrant, magical story of a 3 year old girl exploring the world for the first time while living in Japan.

Alex Billington, FirstShowing.net