Dir: Kohei Kadowaki | Japan, Anime, 112, 2026
We Are Aliens is rather a subversive Japanese anime that disguises its existential weight beneath a deceptively placid surface until extreme violence eventually erupts. At first glance, it plays like a familiar coming-of-age story, but gradually reveals itself as something stranger and more contemplative—a meditation on identity, belonging, and the uneasy feeling of being out of place even among those who seem similar.
Playing in this year’s Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, the film’s premise is disarmingly simple: a group of teenagers discover—or perhaps merely suspect—that they are not entirely human. Whether this “alien” status is literal or metaphorical is left deliberately ambiguous, and the film’s power lies in that uncertainty. Rather than presenting as an overt sci-fi spectacle, it uses the idea of alienness as a lens through which to explore adolescence itself: that persistent sense of disconnection, of observing rather than participating.
Rendered in a soft, pastel palette punctuated by moments of startling cosmic imagery, Kohei Kadawaki’s creation disarmingly nuanced. Everyday settings—classrooms, train stations, quiet suburban streets—are portrayed with a delicate realism, only to be interrupted by vast, otherworldly skies or fleeting distortions in perspective. This contrasting interplay mirrors the characters’ inner lives and angst, where the mundane and the incomprehensible coexist as unhappy bedfellows.
The action unfolds episodically, drifting between the perspectives of its central characters. Each grapples with their own version of alienation: one withdraws into silence, another performs exaggerated reality, while a third becomes obsessed with the idea of “returning home,” wherever—or whatever—that might be. Dialogue is sparse but precise, often giving way to long stretches of stillness allowing our imaginations conjure up the characters’ emotional states.
What distinguishes We Are Aliens is its refusal to offer resolution. There is no grand reveal, no definitive confirmation of who or what these teenagers are. Instead, the film settles into a quiet acceptance of enigma. In doing so, it captures something insightful about youth: the understanding that identity is not something discovered all at once, but something continuously negotiated as the months and years roll by.
It’s a subtle, haunting work—less concerned with answers than with the fragile, often beautiful experience of not quite fitting in. There a also scenes of incredible violence that often take us by surprise.
DIRECTORS’ FORTNIGHT 2026