International film festival favorite Takashi Miike is best known for his jaw-dropping surrealistic horror and crime films, like Audition, Dead or Alive, Visitor Q, and Ichi the Killer. However, since he is also the most prolific filmmaker on Earth (making as many as nine films in one year), his thematic concerns are wide-ranging. Andromedia is a (relatively) gentle tale of emotional loss that is more akin to Spielberg's A.I. and cyber-punk SF than it is to his better known, and far more disturbing works. We are proud to present the North American premiere of Andromedia.

Teenager Mai has fallen in love. Her boyfriend takes her out on a romantic date that ends in tragedy when she is killed in a traffic accident. Mai's distraught father implements his ongoing research involving recording a person's memory into a computer and Mai lives again - in cyberspace (although she now refers to herself as Ai, not Mai).

A large corporation sends thugs to retrieve Ai and her father's technology, but her father downloads her into a laptop, and the chase in on - as she becomes more human. Watch for Won Kar Wai's longtime cinematographer Christopher Doyle (who also shot Zhang Yimou's Hero) as the bad guy in short pants.