Spirited Away

NYICFF presents a rare engagement of Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award®-winning masterpiece, Spirited Away, 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, ten-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 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. An absolutely remarkable film!

“Epic and marvelous… phantasmagoric.” – The New York Times

“One of the year’s best films!” – Roger Ebert

“Astounding! It’s almost impossible to do justice in words either to the visual richness of the movie or to the character-filled storyline. – Variety