THE BOY AND THE HERON | KIMITACHI WA DŌ IKIRU (Closing Film)

JAPAN | 2023 | COLOR | DCP | 124’ | JAPANESE

If this is Miyazaki’s swan song, then succeeding him has just been made almost impossible. 12-year-old Mahito loses his mother in a 2nd WW bombing. A few years later his father marries her sister and drags Mahito in the countryside. Miyazaki shows his character’s sorrow in a series of still images, expressing through Nature’s stillness his lament. However, an anthropomorphic, and seriously obnoxious, heron guides Mahito out of this lethargy, transcending the thin membrane between the world of the living and the dead. Wondrous ‘Alice in Wonderland’-like adventure, which opened this year’s Toronto FF and broke admission records in Japan. D.P.

DIRECTOR: Hayao Miyazaki
SCREENWRITER: Hayao Miyazaki
DoP: Atsushi Okui
MUSIC: Joe Hisaishi
EDITOR: Takeshi Seyama
VOICES: Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Aimyon, Yoshino Kimura, Shōhei Hino, Ko Shibasaki, Takuya Kimura

HAYAO MIYAZAKI
Living legend of animation and great manga artist, born in Tokyo in 1941. Co-founder of the Studio Ghibli. From a young age went to Toei Studios. His work became universally acknowledged by mid-‘90s, however his entire oeuvre, his themes, aesthetics and hand-drawn technique define a ‘Godfather of animation in Japan’.

FILMOGRAPHY
2023 The Boy and the Heron
2013 The Wind Rises
2008 Ponyo
2004 Howl’s Moving Castle
2001 Spirited Away
1997 Princess Mononoke
1992 Porco Rosso
1989 Kiki’s Delivery Service
1988 My Neighbor Totoro
1986 Castle in the Sky
1984 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
1979 The Castle of Cagliostro