Director Hayao Miyazaki’s career recognized by San Sebastian Film Festival

TOULOUSE, France (Kyodo) — Spain’s San Sebastian Film Festival announced on Friday that it is awarding Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki its most prestigious Donostia Award for career achievement.

Miyazaki is expected to receive the award virtually during the film festival, held Sept. 22-30, where his latest work “Kimitachi wa Do Ikiru ka” (The Boy and the Heron) is making its European premiere. The film features a boy who lost his mother in a fire.

At the Venice Film Festival on Friday, Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Aku wa Sonzai Shinai” (Evil Does Not Exist) was recognized by the International Federation of Film Critics with the competition award, while “Hokage” (Shadow of Fire), directed by Shinya Tsukamoto, won a Network for the Promotion of Asia Pacific Cinema award.

“Being chosen (to win the award) will make more people want to watch the film. Nothing makes me happier than this,” said Hamaguchi at the ceremony.

Hamaguchi’s film is about a local community in Nagano Prefecture faced with the fallout from a Tokyo company’s plan to build a glamping site, while Tsukamoto’s film depicts a war orphan and a woman who becomes a sex worker in Japan shortly after World War II.

“I am relieved to see the film being recognized at a time when it has just been produced and we do not know how it will be received,” Tsukamoto told reporters.

Miyazaki’s Donostia award comes after Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda won the same award in 2018 as the first Asian person to do so.

Miyazaki’s works are popular in Japan and abroad. His fantasy movie “Spirited Away” won the prestigious Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2002 and the American Academy Award for Animated Feature Film in 2003.

His other major works include the 1988 classic hit “My Neighbor Totoro,” “Princess Mononoke” in 1997 and “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” in 1984.

The Japanese animator announced his retirement in 2013, citing difficulties in making films due to his age. But he later retracted the statement.