Films

A thousand years after a war that poisoned the planet, a young princess tries to understand the toxic forest and the giant insects that everyone else only wants to burn. An ecological epic that paved the way for the studio.

Made in 1984 at Topcraft, a year before Studio Ghibli existed. It is not technically a Ghibli production, but the studio counts it as the beginning of its story.

Pazu, a boy from a mining town, sees a girl float down from the sky, and the two end up chased by pirates and soldiers who all want the same thing: the flying island of Laputa.

In the last months of the war, two siblings who lost their home in the bombing of Kobe try to survive on their own. One of the most devastating animated films ever made, and one of the most tender.

Two sisters move to the countryside with their father while their mother recovers in a hospital nearby, and discover that the forest next to the house is full of spirits. No villain, no danger, just the feeling of being a child in summer.

At thirteen, Kiki leaves home to spend a year living alone in a seaside town, as every young witch must, and starts a delivery service on her broomstick. A film about independence, work and the days when your magic just won't show up.

Taeko, a 27-year-old office worker from Tokyo, takes a trip to the countryside to help with the safflower harvest and keeps being visited by memories of when she was ten. Quiet, adult and surprisingly funny.

Over the Adriatic in the 1920s, a World War I ace who was somehow turned into a pig hunts sky pirates for money and tries not to think about the past. Miyazaki's most relaxed film, full of seaplanes and old regrets.

A TV film made by the studio's younger staff: a college student remembers the transfer student from Tokyo who turned his last year of high school in Kochi upside down.

The tanuki of the Tama Hills use every shape-shifting trick they know to stop a housing project from swallowing their forest. Funny, chaotic and, in the end, very sad.

Shizuku, a girl who reads all the time, notices the same name on the library cards of every book she borrows. Following that clue leads her to an antique shop, a cat figurine and a boy who wants to make violins.

Cursed after defending his village from a raging boar god, the young prince Ashitaka travels west and ends up in the middle of a war between an iron-making town and the gods of the forest. Nobody here is simply right.

Short watercolor sketches about the Yamadas, an ordinary family that forgets things, bickers, loses their daughter at the mall and still gets along. Takahata's gentlest film.

On the way to their new home, ten-year-old Chihiro and her parents wander into a world of spirits. Her parents are turned into pigs, and she has to work in a bathhouse for the gods until she finds a way back.

Haru saves a cat from being run over, and it turns out to be a prince. The Cat Kingdom's gratitude quickly becomes a problem when they decide she should marry him.

Sophie, a shy young hatter, is turned into an old woman by a witch's curse and finds shelter in the walking castle of Howl, a vain and famous wizard, while a war rages in the background.

In a land where dragons have started to reappear and magic is fading, the wizard Sparrowhawk travels with Arren, a troubled young prince running from something he did.

A goldfish princess escapes from the sea, meets five-year-old Sosuke and decides she wants to be human, which throws the whole ocean off balance. Drawn almost entirely by hand.

Arrietty belongs to a family of tiny people who live under the floorboards of a country house and borrow what they need from the humans upstairs. Everything changes when a sick boy staying in the house sees her.

Yokohama, 1963, a year before the Olympics. Umi, who raises signal flags every morning for her father lost at sea, joins a group of students fighting to save their old clubhouse from demolition.

A fictionalized life of Jiro Horikoshi, the engineer who dreamed of beautiful airplanes and designed the Zero fighter used in the war. Miyazaki's most personal film.

A bamboo cutter finds a tiny girl inside a glowing stalk and decides to raise her as a noble princess, whether she wants it or not. Takahata's last film, drawn in charcoal and watercolor.

Anna, a lonely girl sent to spend the summer by the sea, becomes friends with Marnie, a mysterious blonde girl who lives in the old mansion across the marsh.

A man shipwrecked on a desert island tries again and again to escape, until a giant red turtle changes his plans. A co-production with Dutch director Michaël Dudok de Wit, told without a single word.

Earwig, a sharp orphan who always manages to get her way, is adopted by a witch who only wants an extra pair of hands. The studio's first fully 3D film.

After losing his mother in a fire during the war, Mahito moves to the countryside, where a talking grey heron insists that she is still alive and leads him into another world.