When exploring their new neighbourhood, 10-year-old Chihiro and her parents unwittingly stumble into a magical spirit world. With her parents turned into pigs, Chihiro must embark on a perilous, surreal journey to save them, in which she finds work at a bath house, and encounters a dragon and a witch. With a nod to Alice in Wonderland, Spirited Away is Miyazaki’s much-admired Oscar-winning masterpiece.

“Spirited Away sets its intimations of mortality, the decline of a culture and the loss of nature against one of the most sumptuous and dazzling mises en scène ever created in cinema – in the bathhouse of the gods, where the initially timorous young heroine goes to find work in order to rescue her parents who have been cursed by a magic spell. This is an enchanting and exciting coming-of-age story that can be enjoyed by all ages, but the subdued, lambent melancholy of the movie’s final third, with its train ride into the shadows, is a tour de force of what animation can do.“ Susan Napier

“This is not only as good as animation film gets – this is simply cinema at its best.“ Anne Gjelsvik

“Joe Hisaishi’s enchanting score, the watercolour-like tableaux, and Miyazaki’s trademark trust in his audience to grasp the essence of a moment without any dialogue – aesthetic, tonal and emotional perfection.“ Alan Mattli

Film	Year	Director
Shoes	1916	Lois Weber
EROTIKON	1920	Mauritz Stiller
Sherlock Jr.	1924	Buster Keaton
All That Heaven Allows	1955	Douglas Sirk
Tongues Untied	1989	Marlon Riggs
Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance	1993	Alanis Obomsawin
The Matrix	1999	The Wachowskis
Spirited Away	2001	Hayao Miyazaki
Moonlight	2016	Barry Jenkins
Lingua franca	2019	Isabel Sandoval

Laura Horak

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