First Teaser for Miyazaki’s ‘Boy and the Heron’ Arrives Online

The latest film from animation master Hayao Miyazaki has been brought almost the entire way from concept to release without a single teaser, trailer, or official publicity still. For a long time, Studio Ghibli didn’t even announce the movie’s official title. (It’s The Boy and the Heron, for the record.) There is going into a movie cold, and then there is going into a movie frigid. And this movie wants the latter.

With The Boy and the Heron finally about to make its international premiere at the Toronto Film Festival next week, we’re at last getting our very first glimpse at the movie in the form of an “Introduction” (as it’s billed on YouTube) or a “Pre-Teaser” (as the email I received about it describes it.) Although it doesn’t contain anything in the way of actual footage, it does describe the premise of the film, which is:

A young boy named Mahito yearning for his mother ventures into a world shared by the living and the dead. There, death comes to an end, and life finds a new beginning.

It also calls the movie “a semi-autobiographical fantasy about life, death, and creation, in tribute to friendship, from the mind of Hayao Miyazai.”

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Here is how the film is described in the press release:

The hand-drawn, animated feature film—director Miyazaki’s first feature film in 10 years—is an original story written and directed by Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki and produced by his longtime company partner/co-founder and Academy Award nominee Toshio Suzuki. It features a musical score from Miyazaki’s long-time collaborator Joe Hisaishi, and the film’s theme song, “Spinning Globe,” was penned and performed by global J-pop superstar Kenshi Yonezu.

The Boy and the Heron will make its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next thursday. The film will open in theaters in the U.S. later in the fall.