Ready to watch the most beautiful trailer you’re likely to see this week? Or any other week, for that matter?
Goro Miyazaki’s From Up On Poppy Hill, the latest film from celebrated animation house Studio Ghibli, was released in Japan last summer. English-language distribution is on the horizon, and for the first time in over a decade, Disney won’t be handling the American release. Instead, GKids – the same company currently touring a festival of Ghibli’s complete works – will distribute the film stateside, subtitled in its original Japanese.
That release will take place next March, but before then, it looks like the subtitled version will premiere in Australia at the Reel Anime festival this September. A trailer for that screening has appeared online, and it’s absolutely gorgeous. The film looks reminiscent of several low-key Ghibli masterpieces from the 1990s, including Yoshifumi Kondo’s Whisper of the Heart and Isao Takahata’s Only Yesterday. The former is one of my very favorite films of all time, and I’m eager to see Ghibli return to the warm, small-scale human drama that defined those works.
Goro Miyazaki is indeed the son of legendary animator (and, to my mind, world’s greatest living filmmaker) Hayao Miyazaki, and though his first film, Tales From Earthsea, is considered the only misfire in the Ghibli canon, From Up On Poppy Hill has been very positively received in Japan. From this trailer, I can tell why. The artwork is beautiful, as expected, and there seems to be a calm, assured tone to the work, something that was missing from Earthsea. The trailer tells us little about the story or characters, but I was quickly swept up in the breathtaking atmosphere, even if it only lasted two minutes. I simply cannot wait to lay my eyes on this film.
Watch the new trailer (subtitled in English) below, and tell us what you think.