Japan has sought many avenues to explore the pains and traumas of its past.

It's in this tradition that a new animated feature falls: Sunao Katabuchi's In This Corner of the World, an adaptation of the manga of the same name written and illustrated by Fumiyo Kōno.

The film spans across the '30s and '40s, focused on the cities of Hiroshima and Kure at that time, living under the shadow of an increasingly menacing war. Its characters are fictional, but the events they experienced are all based off carefully researched accounts.

Namely, we follow a young woman named Suzu, who moves from Hiroshima to Kure after she's proposed to by someone she's seemingly never met; it's here she must establish herself anew, amidst a new now-daily routine of food rationing and air raids.

How long can one maintain the semblance of a normal life when the world seems to be falling apart around them?

The film now comes to the UK, after proving a sleeper hit at the box office in Japan and amassing a slate of high-profile local awards.