The Boy and the Heron

During the Second World War, teenage Mahito Maki leaves Tokyo after his mother’s death and moves to the countryside, where his father has married Natsuko, a woman who closely resembles her. Struggling to settle into his new home and school life, Mahito encounters a persistent gray heron that calls him the “long-awaited one.” The bird’s strange behavior draws him toward a supernatural world, where his grief and the unfamiliar changes around him become part of a mystery he must face.