Short answers, pulled from the story.
Earwig and the Witch follows a 10-year-old orphan girl adopted against her wishes by a witch named Bella Yaga and a man named Mandrake. She negotiates to learn magic in exchange for doing household work. Eventually she discovers that her guardians were once members of a rock band called Earwig, and that the band's singer was her own mother.
Gorō Miyazaki directed the film. He is the son of Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki. Gorō said he made the film largely on his own, working with young animators and without consulting the studio's senior staff.
The film received negative reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, only 28 percent of 68 critic reviews were positive. Metacritic calculated a weighted average of 46 out of 100 from 21 reviews, placing it in the mixed or average band.
Earwig and the Witch was Studio Ghibli's first fully three-dimensional computer-animated feature. The studio announced this distinction before the film's release.
The film had its world premiere at the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon on the 18th of October 2020. It had originally been scheduled to premiere at the 2020 Cannes Film Festival, which was cancelled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Satoshi Takebe composed the score and organized a specially-formed band for the film's theme songs, including Sherina Munaf on vocals and musicians from Glim Spanky and Mrs. Green Apple. A second album, Earwig and the Witch Songbook: 13 Lime Avenue, was released on the 26th of January 2022.