Studio Ghibli will unveil new short films outside of Japan at the Cannes Film Festival

In collecting its honorary Palme d'Or, the studio will show four short films by Hayao Miyazaki that you may have never seen.

What is your favorite Ghibli film? Mei and the kittenbus, Mr. Dough and Princess Egg or Boro the caterpillar ? You may not know them, and that's normal: they are part of a series of short films exclusively shown within the walls of the Ghibli Museum, in Mitaka, in the western suburbs of Tokyo, Japan. They have not been shown in cinemas, and are not available, whether on DVD or Blu-ray, and even less in streaming, outside the Archipelago. And so, event: when Studio Ghibli will receive its honorary Palme d'Or on Monday May 20 during the Cannes Film Festivalthe public present at the Grand Théâtre Lumière will be able to see four of these films. “During the ceremony, four new short films, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of the Studio with Toshio Suzuki and Isao Takahata, will be screened”, writes the Festival in a press release. The Festival also unveiled a poster specially designed for the occasion by producer Toshio Suzuki, one of the founders of Ghibli:

On the other hand, don't expect to see Hayao on stage: it will be his son, Gorō Miyazaki, the author of Tales from Earthsea and of Aya and the Witchwho will receive the precious trophy, and will present the four films: Mei and the kittenbus (2002), a mini-sequel to My Neighbor Totoro whose title says it all, Looking for a house (2006) or the trek of a young woman with an intriguing cinematic premise (“This work was created by taking advantage of the rich onomatopoeia used in Japanese. The letters are animated on screen and all the sound effects were created using the human voice”), Mr. Dough and Princess Egg (2010) where a princess escapes a witch with the help of a living piece of pie dough, and finally Boro the Little Caterpillar (2018), the studio's first film to mix hand-drawn and computer-animated animation.

And there are still six other short films to discover at the Ghibli Museum, including one with sumo mice or another about the love story between a water spider and an argyronete. And if you can't travel to Cannes or Mitaka, you can see other shorts by Ghibli and/or Miyazaki online or on DVDs like The night of Taneyamagahara based on Kenji Miyazawa or the fabulous clip On Your Mark, which we invite you to (re)watch now. For the rest, good hunting.