This first of many triumphs for Studio Ghibli is set a thousand years after a nuclear holocaust has gutted the globe. After the death of her father and an attack from the hostile Tormekia, Princess Nausicaä must use her uncanny ability to communicate with the giant crustacean Ohmu to unite her people against the threat of annihilation. Based on the manga of the same name and using Miyazaki’s distinctive stylistic flare for the dreamlike and fantastical, the film also inaugurates Miyazaki’s enduring collaboration and friendship with composer Joe Hisaishi. Visually breathtaking, with truly dexterous image making, the film introduced an original and lasting talent to the world of animation. (116 mins.)

The third Studio Ghibli feature tells the story of two young sisters, Satsuki and Mei Kusakabe, who move with their father into a new house near a vast forest to be closer to their ailing, hospitalized mother. Discovering wondrous forest spirits and dust bunnies, they also encounter Totoro, a giant lumbering bunny-esque creature. “Here is a children’s film made for the world we should live in, rather than the one we occupy. A film with no villains. No fight scenes. No evil adults. No fighting between the two kids. No scary monsters. No darkness before the dawn. A world that is benign. A world where if you meet a strange towering creature in the forest, you curl up on its tummy and have a nap. MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO has become one of the most beloved of all family films without ever having been much promoted or advertised.”—Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (86 mins.)

Dubbed in English from Japanese.

A rare opportunity to see one of Miyazaki’s most stunningly beautiful, exciting, and infrequently screened films. A young girl with a mysterious crystal pendant falls out of the sky into the arms and life of young Pazu. Together they search for a floating island in the sky, site of a long-dead civilization promising enormous wealth and power to those who can unlock its secrets. CASTLE IN THE SKY is an early masterpiece of storytelling and filmmaking whose imaginative and ornately detailed vision presaged later films like PRINCESS MONONOKE and SPIRITED AWAY. (124 mins.)

One of Miyazaki’s most beloved films, KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE tells the story of a resourceful young witch who uses her broom to create a delivery service, only to lose her gift of flight in a moment of self-doubt. It is tradition for all young witches to leave their families on the night of a full moon and set out into the wide world to learn their craft. When that night comes for Kiki, she embarks on her life journey with her chatty black cat Jiji, landing the next morning in a seaside village where a bakery owner hires her to make deliveries. Rarely has the animator’s art been so brilliantly rendered as in this delightfully imaginative film—a beautiful and timeless story of a young girl finding her way in the world. (102 mins.)

Realizing that she is at a crossroads in her life, bored twenty-something Taeko heads for the countryside. The trip dredges up forgotten childhood memories which unfold in flashback to younger years: the first immature stirrings of romance, the onset of puberty, and the frustrations of math and boys. In lyrical switches between the present and the past, Taeko wonders if she has been true to the dreams of her childhood self. A double period piece that beautifully evokes both the 1960s and 1980s and a quintessential drama of Japanese school-day nostalgia, ONLY YESTERDAY delves deeper into the real emotional experiences of girls and women than perhaps any animated film before or since. (118 mins.)

Not available in any North American home viewing formats. Film is in Japanese with English subtitles.

A landmark of animation and a film of unsurpassed power and beauty, Miyazaki’s epic story of conflict and balance between humans, God, and nature has been universally acclaimed by critics and broke the box office record on its original release in Japan. While defending his village from a demonic boar-god, the young warrior Ashitaka becomes afflicted with a deadly curse that grants him superhuman power in battle but will eventually take his life. Traveling west to find a cure and meet his destiny, he journeys deep into the sacred depths of the Great Forest where he meets San (Princess Mononoke), a girl raised by wolf-gods. Mononoke is a force of nature, riding bareback on a great white wolf and terrorizing the human outpost of Iron Town on the edge of the forest. (134 mins.)

This subtle, poignant, and wonderfully detailed story of adolescence and teenage isolation is rarely seen outside of Japan. Taku and his best friend Yutaka are headed back to school for what looks like another uneventful year. But they soon find their friendship tested by the arrival of Rikako, a beautiful new transfer student from Tokyo whose attitude vacillates wildly from flirty and flippant to melancholic. When Taku joins Rikako on a trip to Tokyo, the school erupts with rumors, and the three friends are forced to come to terms with their changing relationships. The first Studio Ghibli film directed by someone other than studio founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, this adaptation of Saeko Himuro’s bestselling novel is an accomplished teenage drama and a true discovery. (72 mins.)

Not available in any North American home viewing formats.

This unsung Miyazaki treasure nestles a tale of morality and identity inside a soaring airborne adventure—a tribute to early aviation and the reckless flyboys whose home was the open sky. Set in a mid-World War II Italy swept by fascism, the film follows Marco, a world-weary flying ace turned bounty hunter who plies his trade above the waters of the Adriatic. Somewhere along the way a curse has transformed Marco’s head into that of a pig, reflecting his loss of faith in humanity. Marco meets his polar opposite in the innocent and energetic 17-year-old Fio, an aspiring airplane designer, and the two are catapulted into an airborne adventure pursued by air pirates, the Italian army, and an egotistical American flying ace. (94 mins.)

In a break from the frequently mythical storytelling of Studio Ghibli, director Isao Takahata wryly tweaks the everyday activities of family life with his depiction of the irresponsible, slovenly, and lazy Yamada family and their unassuming way of life. With cartoon-like characters (the film is based on a newspaper comic strip) and visual design unlike anything else in the Ghibli canon, the film is illustrated in a series of rough sketches and outlines, which are then filled with soft colors that evoke watercolor painting. (104 mins.)

Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning masterpiece was the biggest box office hit of all time in Japan and a film that helped redefine the possibilities of animation for American audiences and a generation of new filmmakers. Wandering through an abandoned carnival site, 10-year-old Chichiro is separated from her parents and stumbles into a dreamlike spirit world where she is put to work in a bathhouse for the gods, a place where all kinds of nonhuman beings come to refresh, relax, and recharge. Here she encounters a vast menagerie of impossibly inventive characters—shape-shifting phantoms and spirits, some friendly, some less so—and must find the inner strength to outsmart her captors and return to her family. Combining Japanese mythology with THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS-type whimsy, SPIRITED AWAY cemented Miyazaki’s reputation as an icon of inspired animation and wondrous, lyrical storytelling. (125 mins.)

In this brilliant and often overlooked Studio Ghibli masterpiece, the forests are filled with groups of magical tanuki, mischievous raccoon-like animals from Japanese folklore that are capable of shape-shifting from their standard raccoon form to practically any object. The tanuki spend their days playing idly in the hillsides and squabbling over food—until the construction of a huge new Tokyo suburb clears the nearby forest and threatens their way of life. In an effort to defend their home, the tanuki learn to transform into humans and start playing tricks to make the workers think the construction site is haunted, ending in a spectacular night-time spirit parade, with thousands of ghosts, dragons, and other magical creatures descending on the city. (119 mins.)

Dubbed in English from Japanese.

WHISPER OF THE HEART is a gentle coming-of-age drama scripted, produced, and storyboarded by Miyazaki and then directed by Yoshifumi Kondo (later the animation director on PRINCESS MONONOKE), whom Miyazaki hoped would introduce new blood into his Studio Ghibli. Adapted from the manga by Aoi Hiragi, the film tells the story of Shizuku, a shy student with high school entrance exam worries and inchoate aspirations who meets a magical cat on a commuter bus and follows it to a boutique where significant objects abound, each with a story of its own. The story of a young girl finding her voice both literally and figuratively, “Miyazaki’s script suggests that a sense of magic can exist, even in everyday Tokyo.”—Charles Solomon (111 mins.)

Sophie, an average teenage girl working in a hat shop, finds her life thrown into turmoil when she is literally swept off her feet by a handsome but mysterious wizard named Howl. After this chance meeting, the young girl is turned into a 90-year-old woman by the vain and conniving Witch of the Waste. Embarking on an incredible adventure to lift the curse, she finds refuge in Howl’s magical moving castle. As the true power of Howl’s wizardry is revealed and his relationship with Sophie deepens, our young grey heroine finds herself fighting to protect them both from a dangerous war of sorcery that threatens their world. HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE was the second Studio Ghibli film to be nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards. (119 mins.)

Dubbed in English from Japanese.