When Marnie Was There

Director: Hiromasa Yonebayashi

2014 / 103min / DCP

Yonebayashi’s Studio Ghibli–produced adaptation of British author Joan G. Robinson’s 1967 novel of the same name transplant the source’s action from the marshes of Norfolk to the Kushiro wetlands in Hokkaido, where young Anna, staying with relatives, strikes up an increasingly intense friendship with the secretive Marnie, a girl of her own age that only she appears able to see. A work of exceptional delicacy—both in its sensitive treatment of the central relationship and its hand-drawn filigree. “The gentle, unforced charm of the animation feels like the very best of book illustration come to miraculous life, but with a strong, almost Hitchcockian streak of excitement and danger.” —The Guardian

Distributor: GKIDS

Part of In Her Shadow