CPH:DOX 2025 – Miyazaki – Spirit of Nature / Miyazaki, l’esprit de la nature

For more than 40 years, Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki has been enriching the world with his imaginative and beautiful animé films. ‘My Neighbour Totoro’, ‘The Living Castle’, ‘Chihiro and the Witches’ and most recently ‘The Boy and the Heron’ have made him the absolute superstar of modern animation. But as famous as his films are, Miyazaki the man is just as mysterious. Through conversations with Miyazaki, his son, friends, collaborators and philosophers like Timothy Morton, we get closer to the modest genius and his inner universe. The film centers on his work on ‘Princess Mononoke’ from 1997, where we join him at the drawing board until he experiences a creative turning point that, backed by Disney, catapults him from Japan to the rest of the world as he matures and his artistic vision of the world darkens. Miyazaki’s films may be populated with spirit beings and cat buses, but the real world of human folly, wars and pollution is never far away.