Studio Ghibli’s “The Boy and the Heron,” directed by Hayao Miyazaki, won an Academy Award for best animated feature film at the 96th edition of the U.S. film awards ceremony on Sunday evening in Los Angeles.
It is the second time the revered Japanese director has won an Oscar. He won his first, in the same animated feature category, in 2003 for “Spirited Away.” He also received two Oscar nominations for “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “The Wind Rises,” in 2006 and 2014, respectively.
The 83-year-old director and Studio Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki, 75, were not present at the ceremony to accept the award. In the press room backstage, however, a Studio Ghibli representative read a statement by Suzuki on his behalf:
“As producer of ‘The Boy and the Heron,’ I am extremely honored to receive the Academy Award for best animated feature. … This film was truly difficult to bring to completion. I am very appreciative that the work that was created after overcoming these difficulties has been seen by so many people around the world, and that it has received this recognition. Both Hayao Miyazaki and I have aged a considerable amount. I am grateful to receive such an honor at my age, and taking this as a message to continue our work, I will devote myself to work harder in the future.”
“The Boy and the Heron” is a loosely autobiographical film inspired by Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 novel “How Do You Live?” The film centers on a young boy grappling with the grief of losing his mother during World War II. He then enters a fantastical world in search of his missing stepmother.
Ahead of its July 2023 release in Japan, the film received an unconventional marketing approach: The studio opted to eschew a traditional publicity campaign and only issue a promotional poster.
Although Miyazaki announced his retirement in 2013, he returned to filmmaking to work on “The Boy and the Heron.” While many believed the film to be the director’s swansong, Studio Ghibli vice-president Junichi Nishioka teased in September that he is “already coming into the office with new ideas.”