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For the first time, the French film festival will give its highest honor to a company, awarding its lifetime achievement prize to the legendary Japanese anime studio.
By Scott Roxborough
Europe Bureau Chief
The Cannes Film Festival will award legendary Japanese anime house Studio Ghibli with its honorary Palme d’Or this year, the first time Cannes has given its highest award to a company instead of an individual.
“For the first time in our history, it’s not a person but an institution that we have chosen to celebrate,” said Cannes Festival president Iris Knobloch and general delegate Thierry Frémaux, announcing the honor on Wednesday. They praised Ghibli’s animated features as filled with characters who “populate our imaginations with prolific, colorful universes and sensitive, engaging narrations. With Ghibli, Japanese animation stands as one of the great adventures of cinephilia, between tradition and modernity.”
Founded in 1985 by Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Toshio Suzuki, and Yasuyoshi Tokuma, Studio Ghibli has in the past 40 years, “achieved what seemed to be an impossible feat: Independently producing pure masterpieces and conquering the mass market,” the festival said. The Toyko production house has delivered a steady stream of animated classics, from Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbor Totoro to Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle and Ponyo. Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001) and last year’s The Boy and the Heron, won Oscars for in the best animated feature category. Both were also blockbuster hits. Spirited Away earned more than $350 million worldwide, and The Boy and the Heron —expected to be Miyazaki’s last film as a director —has been similarly successful, recently smashing box office records in China.
“I am truly honored and delighted that the studio is awarded the Honorary Palme d’or. I would like to thank the Festival de Cannes from the bottom of my heart,” said Toshio Suzuki. “Forty years ago, Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata and I established Studio Ghibli with the desire to bring high-level, high-quality animation to children and adults of all ages. Today, our films are watched by people all over the world, and many visitors come to the Ghibli Museum, Mitaka and Ghibli Park to experience the world of our films for themselves. We have truly come a long way for Studio Ghibli to become such a big organization. Although Miyazaki and I have aged considerably, I am sure that Studio Ghibli will continue to take on new challenges, led by the staff who will carry on the spirit of the company. It would be my greatest pleasure if you look forward to what’s next.”
Spirited Away premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, where it won the Golden Bear for best film, and The Boy and the Heron was last year’s opening night film in Toronto, but few Ghibli films have bowed in Cannes. A notable exception is Michael Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle (2016), the Japanese studio’s first-ever collaboration with a European production company, which screened in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section.
The 77th Cannes Film Festival runs from May 14 to May 25.
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