When Marnie Was There

Twelve-year-old Anna avoids her classmates and finds an escape from the outside world in drawing. When she moves to a sleepy seaside village to stay with relatives for the holidays because of her asthma, she finds peace in the middle of a beautiful landscape. During her sketchbook wanderings around the area, she meets Marnie, an optimistic girl who inhabits a grand old mansion beyond the wetlands. With each encounter, their friendship deepens, but at the same time Anna begins to uncover the secrets surrounding her new friend and the history of the mansion, which Anna finds strangely appealing. Summer with Marnie was the first film made by Studio Ghibli that did not involve any of its founders. The desire to give full rein to the new generation of filmmakers who had been involved in the earlier years of Hayao Miyazaki's and Isao Takahata's films resulted in an enchanting work that carries on the legacy of an established brand while taking its own unique path. In his second directorial project after The Secret World of Arrietty, Hiromasa Yonebayashi unfolds before the audience a captivating story where the lineage of coming of age and finding oneself intertwines with elements of classic gothic novels into a delicate, slow-moving yet emotionally overflowing work.