The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced on Tuesday the nominees for the 91st Academy Awards, and the anime film Mirai has been nominated in the Best Animated Feature Film category.
Other nominees in the category are Incredibles 2 (Walt Disney/Pixar), Isle of Dogs (Studio Babelsberg/Indian Paintbrush/American Empirical Pictures), Ralph Breaks the Internet (Walt Disney Animation), and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Animation).
A family is living in a small house in an obscure corner of a certain city—in that house lives the family’s spoiled four-year-old boy Kun-chan. When Kun-chan gets a little sister named Mirai, he feels that his new sister stole his parents’ love from him, and is overwhelmed by many experiences he undergoes for the first time in his life. In the midst of it all, he meets an older version of Mirai, who has come from the future. (Synopsis from Anime News Network)
Mirai is a Japanese animated film written and directed by Mamoru Hosoda, which was produced by Studio Chizu.
Hosoda previously worked in several critically-acclaimed anime films, including The Girl Who Leapt Through Time in 2006 and Wolf Children in 2012.
Hiroyuki Aoyama, who also worked in The Great Passage anime series, handled the character designs while Masakatsu Takagi handled the music arrangements.
The Japanese voice cast were lead by Moka Kamishiraishi (“Sumie Ayado”, Real Girl live-action movie) as “Kun-chan” and Haru Kuroki (“Yuki”, Wolf Children) as “Mirai-chan”.
In addition, the Japanese film Shoplifters has also been nominated in the Best Foreign Language film category.
The film was written, edited and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, which won Cannes Film Festival’s top prize Palme d’Or, and nominated in the 76th Golden Globe Awards for Best Foreign Language Film.
Kore-eda previously worked on films Like Father, Like Son (2013) and Our Little Sister (2015), which was also nominated in the film festival’s top prize.
Other nominees in the category are Capernaum (Lebanon, Nadine Labaki), Cold War (Poland, Paweł Pawlikowski), Never Look Away (Germany, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), and Roma (Mexico, Alfonso Cuarón).
The 91st Annual Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, February 24.
