The Toronto International Film Festival has had to shake things up in a few ways this year, due to the ongoing strikes that will prohibit many A-list stars from attending the upcoming event. Despite that hurdle, the festival released a strong lineup earlier this week that includes many notable names who can attend as directors.
Now the festival, which runs September 7–17, has announced that for the first time ever, an animated film will open the event: Hayao Miyazaki’s latest movie, The Boy and the Heron.
Written and directed by the esteemed Japanese filmmaker and produced by the studio he cofounded, Studio Ghibli, the movie centers on a boy who finds an abandoned tower and enters into a fantastical world with a talking gray heron. Studio Ghibli made the unprecedented move of opening the hand-drawn, animated feature—Miyazaki’s first feature film in 10 years—in Japan without any promotion or marketing, so that audiences could experience it without any preconceived notions. It opened to record-breaking success in Japan, and will be released later this year in the US by GKIDS.
2023 Studio Ghibli
“Already acclaimed as a masterpiece in Japan, Hayao Miyazaki’s new film begins as a simple story of loss and love and rises to a staggering work of imagination,” says a statement from TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey. “I look forward to our audience discovering its mysteries for themselves, but I can promise a singular, transformative experience.”
Several of Studio Ghibli’s films have played at TIFF previously, including The Red Turtle (2016), The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2014), The Wind Rises (2013), From Up on Poppy Hill (2011), Spirited Away (2002), and Princess Mononoke (1999).
The Toronto International Film Festival is a traditional launching pad for films set for the Oscar trail, and though an animated film may seem like an unusual opener choice, Miyazaki’s films are often strong contenders in the animated race, despite the domination in that category by Disney and Pixar movies. His 2001 film, Spirited Away, won the Academy Award for animated feature and became the highest-grossing film in Japanese history, maintaining that record for 19 years. With this strong launching pad at TIFF, we’ll see how high The Boy and the Heron can soar in the race in the coming months.
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