Skip to content
Curated playlist

Films scored by Joe Hisaishi

  • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (film)8 minNausicaä of the Valley of the Wind arrived in Japanese cinemas on the 11th of March 1984, carrying a story set one thousand years after an apocalyptic war called the Seven Days of Fire. The film was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki,…
  • Castle in the Sky11 minCastle in the Sky opened in 103 Japanese theaters on the 2nd of August 1986, carrying on its shoulders the future of a brand-new animation studio that had been in existence for barely a year. The film was the first production to bear the…
  • My Neighbor Totoro11 minMy Neighbor Totoro, a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, opens on a family driving to an old house in the countryside, their belongings stacked in a truck. Two girls - Satsuki, around ten years old,…
  • Kiki's Delivery Service13 minKiki's Delivery Service opens with a rule every witch must follow. On turning thirteen, she leaves home alone for a year, taking only a cat and a broomstick. Hayao Miyazaki adapted that premise from Eiko Kadono's 1985 novel into a 1989…
  • Spirited Away11 minSpirited Away opens on a ten-year-old girl named Chihiro Ogino riding in her parents' imported Audi, sulking about moving to a new neighborhood. Her father takes a wrong turn down an unexpected road, parks in front of a tunnel, and insists…
  • The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (film)9 minThe Tale of the Princess Kaguya arrived in Japanese cinemas on the 23rd of November 2013 as the most expensive Japanese film ever made, carrying a budget of US$49.3 million. It was directed by Isao Takahata, a founding figure at Studio…
  • Princess Mononoke18 minPrincess Mononoke arrived in Japanese cinemas on the 12th of July, 1997, and within days the newspapers had a name for what was happening: the "Mononoke phenomenon." By the end of its first week, more than a million people had seen it. By…
  • Ponyo8 minPonyo begins with a goldfish-like creature trapped inside a glass jar, drifting toward shore on the back of a jellyfish. That creature is Brunhilde, daughter of a misanthropic underwater wizard named Fujimoto, and the story of how she…
  • The Wind Rises7 minThe Wind Rises opens not with a battle or a disaster, but with a boy's dream. In 1918, Jiro Horikoshi longs to fly. His eyes are too weak to let him be a pilot. So he does something else: he learns to build the planes instead. What follows…
  • Porco Rosso10 minPorco Rosso is a 1992 Japanese animated film by Hayao Miyazaki about a man who has become a pig. Not metaphorically. Marco Pagot, an Italian ace from the First World War, flies a red seaplane over the Adriatic Sea, hunting air pirates for…
  • The Boy and the Heron18 minThe Boy and the Heron, a 2023 fantasy film from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, reached Japanese theaters behind a single poster and nothing else. No trailer. No cast list. No plot summary. A decade earlier, Miyazaki had stood at a press…
  • Howl's Moving Castle (film)10 minHowl's Moving Castle arrived in Japanese cinemas on the 20th of November 2004, carrying more emotional weight than most animated films dare to attempt. Director Hayao Miyazaki had just accepted an Oscar for Spirited Away when the United…

Queue