Cannes 2024: This is one of the biggest animation studios and will receive the prestigious Palme d’Or

The second honorary Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival! And a big first: if it is already planned that George Lucas will be honored at the closing ceremony (like Harrison Ford, Jodie Foster, Tom Cruise or Forest Whitaker in previous editions), there will also be a collective prize for Studio Ghibli. A recent Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature thanks to The Boy and the Heron.

If the adventure started just 40 years ago, with the release of Nausicaa of the Wind Valley, the studio was born only the following year, in 1985. Thanks to him, Hayao Miyazaki and the late Isao Takahata, who died in April 2018, achieved what was then impossible: independently producing pure masterpieces and conquering the general public.

Producer Toshio Suzuki, a key member of the studio from the start and quickly given a full-time role, took over with remarkable efficiency, establishing a perfect complement between Miyazaki and Takahata’s projects, in turn producers and directors.

From My Neighbor Totoro to The Boy and the Heron, including Porco Rosso, Howl’s Moving Castle, Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbors the Yamadas, Kiki the Little Witch, Ponyo on the Rock and Spirit Away, Ghibli’s popularity continued to grow. An increasingly wide audience.

Hayao Miyazaki on the Croisette?

“Like all cinematic icons, these characters fill our imaginations with rich and colorful worlds and sensitive and faithful stories.”– Cannes Film Festival president Iris Knobloch said in a press release about the award ceremony. With Ghibli, Japanese animated cinema is considered one of the greatest adventures of cinephilia, between tradition and modernity.

With this Palme d’Or, the event intends to remember its attachment to animated cinema twenty years after Shrek 2 was in competition. Although Pixar regularly presents its latest baby, and Ghibli passed the Un Certain Regard section in 2016, with Red Turtle co-producing with the European studio.

The press release, however, did not specify a date for the presentation of this honorary Palme d’Or (opening time, what about Jodie Foster and Forest Whitaker?). nor the talents that will be there to receive it. Hayao Miyazaki himself? Toshio Suzuki, producer and co-founder of Ghibli? Even Joe Hishai, the composer of several of the studio’s films? Response in less than one month at most.