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Ten-year-old Chihiro is sulking about moving to a new town when her family stumbles into an abandoned amusement park that turns out to be anything but abandoned: it is a bathhouse for spirits, run by the fearsome witch Yubaba, who turns Chihiro's parents into pigs and strips her of her name. To survive and save her family, Chihiro must work under Yubaba, navigating a world of gods, spirits, and stranger things, all while trying not to forget who she really is. It is a coming-of-age fantasy unlike anything else, whimsical and eerie in equal measure, and endlessly rewatchable.
⚠ Background — may contain spoilers
Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, known in English as Spirited Away, was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli, released in 2001. It became a landmark of world cinema, winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the highest accolade any anime film had achieved at that point, and it remains one of the highest-grossing films in Japanese box office history. Widely regarded as Miyazaki's masterpiece and one of the greatest animated films ever made, it continues to be studied for its imaginative worldbuilding, environmental themes, and its refusal to simplify its heroine's growth into anything tidy or easy.
Established in 2002 and launched as an independent event in 2014, the Tokyo Anime Award Festival (TAAF) is an annual international animation festival hosted in Tokyo, Japan. Operating under the slogan "TOKYO is the HUB of contemporary ANIMATION," its goal is to discover new talent, promote animation culture, and celebrate outstanding works worldwide.
Spirited Away is a dark and rhythmic movie. It has a tone and a theme that sometimes invites you in, but also pulls you farther away from what a dream could be. Though it's a dreaming world, you see everything you try to understand in it. But at the same time, it's a very childish dream. Do you understand how a person gets lost in it? How okay it feels, growing into certain beliefs?
Spirited Away struck me to my core, seeing this movie in such a surrealistic manner and understanding the trouble and trauma a child could go through, even in their childhood, even when they're dreaming. This is a phenomenal film, and obviously, award-worthy cinema.
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