The Boy and the Heron wins the Oscar for Best Animated Feature 2024

Hollywood realized in 2001 that cinema was not just about flesh and bone, that filmmakers had also learned to dream through drawings, and that what was once the journey of a pencil on a sheet of paper had mobilized so much technology and personnel that its weight in the industry was impossible to ignore. Since then, the Academy has awarded these works with the coveted Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film, an accolade that, for many, is the epitome of pictorial art in cinema. This year, it goes to The Boy and the Heron.

Winner: The Boy and the Heron

Hollywood succumbs to the magic of Hayao Miyazaki. With what looks like being his last move, the Japanese film director signs off with an Oscar that, although it is an award for The Boy and the Heron, partly recognizes the filmmaker’s legacy and leaves the bittersweet and nostalgic aftertaste that farewells usually have. Everything is about Miyazaki’s artistry: back in 2003, he won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature for Spirited Away, a film that balances terror and jubilation to result in a masterpiece; in 2014, having retired, he received the Academy Honorary Award for his career achievements.

He returned only once, last year, and he did so to tell the now Oscar-winning story of Mahito, a young man struggling to settle in a new city after the death of his mother. Miyazaki’s fantasy, from his Ghibli studio, comes into play when a talking heron informs him that, in reality, she is still alive. And they both embark on one of those adventures, one of those dreamlike journeys that the Japanese artist so deeply draws, towards a new world that they enter from an abandoned tower.

Technical details

Original title: How Do You Live?

Year: 2023

Duration: 124 minutes

Country: Japan

Directors: Hayao Miyazaki

Screenplay: Hayao Miyazaki Music: Daniel Pemberton --- Joe Hisaishi (main song by Kenshi Yonezu)

Cinematography: Animation (Atsushi Okui)

Cast:

Animation Production Companies: Studio Ghibli

Distributor: Toho, GKIDS, Wild Bunch, Vértigo Films, Cine Caníbal

Genre: Animation, Psychological Drama, Fantasy

Past winners of the Oscar for Animated Feature Film