The Boy and the Heron

Set in Japan during the Second World War, the film follows Mahito, a boy whose mother dies in a fire in Tokyo. He leaves the city to live with his father and his father's new wife, Natsuko, in an old country estate. Natsuko closely resembles Mahito's late mother, and his father is often away working at a defense plant, so the boy spends his days with his pregnant stepmother, the elderly household staff, and a persistent gray heron that refuses to leave him alone. The bird tells Mahito it can take him to his mother, drawing him toward a mysterious tower that local legends surround.

Hayao Miyazaki directed and wrote the screenplay, working with longtime producer Toshio Suzuki. It is the fifteenth of the sixteen films he has directed, arriving after The Wind Rises in 2013 and ahead of Sherlock Hound: The Movie. The voice cast includes Soma Santoki as Mahito, Masaki Suda as the heron, Ko Shibasaki, Aimyon, Yoshino Kimura and Takuya Kimura. Studio Ghibli produced the film on a budget of about 50 million dollars, and it took roughly 294 million dollars worldwide.

On IMDb the film holds 7.3 out of 10 from about 125,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 7.4 from a much smaller pool of around 2,800. A critics' rating of 8.5 from 275 reviews places it clearly above both audience scores.