“The City of Lost Children” (La Cité des Enfants Perdus), Original Japanese Vantan Promotional Poster 1996, Ultra Rare, B1 Size (73 × 103 cm) - Gallery
This is an ultra-rare original Japanese B1 promotional poster produced in 1996 for Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro’s The City of Lost Children, featuring a distinctive promotional association with Vantan Dennoh Intelligence College.
This unusual design is incredibly difficult to find, particularly in this impressive large format. Measuring approximately 72.8 × 103 cm, the B1 provides twice the surface area of a standard Japanese B2 poster, giving its intricate, surreal composition exceptional display presence.
Film background
Following Delicatessen, Jeunet and Caro created an elaborate dark fairy tale set around a decaying harbour and an isolated laboratory. A scientist unable to dream kidnaps children to steal their dreams, while a strongman named One, played by Ron Perlman, joins the resourceful young Miette, played by Judith Vittet, on a rescue mission.
The film combines grotesque humour, childhood vulnerability, and fantastical machinery within a meticulously constructed world. Darius Khondji’s cinematography, Jean-Paul Gaultier’s costumes, and Angelo Badalamenti’s score contribute to its distinctive atmosphere.
Selected as the opening film of the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, it reached Japanese cinemas in 1996 and remains a landmark collaboration between two of French cinema’s most imaginative visual storytellers.
Vantan promotional context
The lower-left branding identifies Vantan Dennoh Intelligence College, a Japanese school training digital media creators, beneath the heading “digital entertainment.”
The accompanying Japanese copy explains that computer graphics had become an integral component of filmmaking alongside music and costume, and states Vantan’s support for The City of Lost Children as a film bringing these elements together.
This gives the poster a particularly interesting identity: a film promotion connected to Japan’s emerging digital creative culture, with the school’s message incorporated into an expansive, image-led design.
Poster design
A dense, kaleidoscopic photomontage combines deep crimson, copper, turquoise, and pools of brilliant white light.
Mirrored figures wearing elaborate optical headsets frame the upper composition. At its centre, a child’s face appears beneath a nightmarish gathering of Santa Claus figures, transforming familiar childhood imagery into something unsettling.
Below, children carrying torches emerge from the darkness. Ron Perlman’s portrait anchors the lower edge, beside an enlarged flea fitted with an injection apparatus—one of the film’s characteristic combinations of the organic and mechanical.
The original French title stretches across the top in pale lettering, accompanied by fine intersecting lines and small coloured squares. The symmetrical background and repeated figures give the entire image a disorienting, dreamlike quality, particularly effective at B1 scale.
Condition
Excellent+. The poster retains vivid colour and excellent overall graphic impact, with light handling wear and minor creasing visible near the edges. Please review the photographs—they show the exact poster for sale.
This is an original Japanese B1 promotional poster produced in 1996.
It is not a reproduction or a modern reprint.
It is approximately 30 years old.
Certificate of Authenticity included.
