(Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, Hayao Miyazaki, Japan 2002, 125 min.)

Miyazaki. Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning masterpiece Spirited Away was Japan’s biggest-ever box office hit 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 dream-like 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 must find the inner strength to outsmart her captors and return to her family. Combining Japanese mythology with Through the Looking Glass whimsy, Spirited Away cemented Miyazaki’s reputation as an icon of inspired animation and wondrous, lyrical storytelling.

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