Nagisa no Shindobaddo

[Eija Margit Niskanen]

>Is there any reason why it was only released in the UK?  Was it just that
it was only picked 
>by a company in the UK (sorry for my ignorance, but is PAL video a
company, or just referring
>to the PAL video standard?)?

PAL is the European video standard, as you guessed right. Where a, say
Japanese, film gets released, is totally up to the local distributors. For
some reason, many recent Japanese films have got distributors in European
countries, but not in the U.S. 

Eija