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Mamoru Hosoda's Mirai Film Wins Award at Stuttgart Animated Film Festival
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
Mamoru Hosoda's Mirai film won the AniMovie award for best animated feature film at the International Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film in Germany on Sunday. The film was in competition with nine other nominees, drawn from a list of 60 submissions. The film is the first anime feature film to win the award in five years since Makoto Shinkai's The Garden of Words film won the award in 2014. Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo also won the award in 2010.
The film won the Animation of the Year award at the 42nd annual Japan Academy Prizes in March. The film also won the Best Animated Independent Feature category for the 46th Annual Annie Awards. The film was nominated for the Animated Feature Film category of the 91st Academy Awards, but did not win.
GKIDS and Fathom Events began screening the film in 700 U.S. theaters on November 29, and the film also screened on December 5 and December 8. GKIDS also held its own theatrical release in the United States on November 30. Those North American screenings earned US$672,652. GKIDS began screening the film again on February 18.
The 100-minute film opened at #2 at the box office in Japan last July.
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, whom Hosoda had previously worked with on The Boy and The Beast, returned as art directors. Producer Yuichiro Saito returned from Hosoda's earlier films.
Sources: International Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film, Animation Business Journal (Tadashi Sudo)
