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Mamoru Hosoda's Mirai Released Friday

Mirai will open in UK and Ireland cinemas from Friday November 2, with dubbed screenings from November 4. Selected cinemas will be screening both the subtitled and dubbed versions throughout the following week. Details of venues and booking links are available on the film's official website.

Following Wolf Children in 2012, Summer Wars in 2009, and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time in in 2006, Mirai is Hosoda's fourth work to win the Best Animated Feature Film award at the festival.

The 100-minute film opened at #2 at the box office in Japan on July 20. The film had its world premiere in May at this year's Directors' Fortnight, an independent section held in parallel to the Cannes Film Festival. The film also screened in competition at Annecy in June.

The English dub, starring Victoria Grace (The Last of Us Part II's Yara) as the title character, premiered at Los Angeles' Animation is Film Festival on October 19.

The film's story centers around a family living in a small house in an obscure corner of a certain city — in particular, the family's spoiled four-year-old boy KUN-chan. When KUN-chan gets a little sister named Mirai, he feels that his new sister stole his parents' love from him, and is overwhelmed by many experiences he undergoes for the first time in his life. In the midst of it all, he meets an older version of Mirai, who has come from the future.

Hosoda directed the film at his Studio Chizu, and is also credited as scriptwriter and for the original story. Hiroyuki Aoyama (animation director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, and The Boy and The Beast) and Ayako Hata (key animator on the same films) returned for this new film as animation directors. Yohei Takamatsu and Takashi Omori, who Hosoda had previously worked with on The Boy and The Beast, returned as art directors. Producer Yuichiro Saito returned from Hosoda's earlier films.