2024 BAFTA Awards: Studio Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron Wins Best Animated Film

The Boy and the Heron has done it again! After taking home a Golden Globes for Best Animated Feature, the Studio Ghibli movie has earned a massive prize from the BAFTA Awards. The event is going down in the United Kingdom right now, and it was there The Boy and the Heron won Best Animated Film.

This massive award marks yet another milestone for Hayao Miyazaki's newest film. Not only did it win a historic Golden Globe earlier in the year, but The Boy and the Heron is also up to win an Academy Award. The event has nominated Miyazaki's film for Best Animated Feature alongside other hits like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

THE BOY AND THE HERON has won the @BAFTA award for Best Animated Film! Congratulations to Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli!🪽 pic.twitter.com/JHs8ZLFqEh

— GKIDS Films (@GKIDSfilms) February 18, 2024

With a BAFTA and Golden Globe under its thumb, The Boy and the Heron is looking good in terms of Oscar viability. We will have to wait until March to see how Studio Ghibli fares at the event. For now, fans can rest easy knowing the anime feature earned a BAFTA, and it also had a good showing at the 51st Annie Awards.

The Boy and the Heron lost the event's top prize to the Spider-Verse team, but it did not leave empty-handed. Hayao Miyazaki was gifted the award for Best Storyboarding, and The Boy and the Heron earned Best Character Animation for a feature. Takeshi Honda, a supervising animator on The Boy and the Heron, was gifted the award to the surprise of many. Honda's honor marks the second time in 14 years that a 2D animator has won the award, after all.

If you have not seen The Boy and the Heron, the animated movie made its debut last year to quiet acclaim. The movie was notorious silent in terms of marketing save for a single poster, but Miyazaki's reputation helped turn the movie into a global hit. Soon, GKIDS Films will help usher the Miyazaki hit onto home video. So for those wanting to know more about The Boy and the Heron, you can read its official synopsis below:

"Mahito, a young 12-year-old boy, struggles to settle in a new town after his mother's death. However, when a talking heron informs Mahito that his mother is still alive, he enters an abandoned tower in search of her, which takes him to another world."

What do you make of this latest Studio Ghibli win? Let us know what you think in the comments below as well as on Twitter and Instagram. You can also hit me up @MeganPetersCB to share your take!