Mary and the Witch's Flower

Mary and The Witch's Flower is the debut film from Studio Ponoc, the ambitious new Japanese animation studio founded by two-time Academy Award®-nominated producer Yoshiaki Nishimura (The Tale of The Princess Kaguya, When Marnie Was There), whose reunion with fellow Academy Award®-nominated director Hiromasa Yonebayashi (When Marnie Was There) on this gorgeous, action-packed fantasy film points towards an exciting future. Mary is a plain, young girl, stuck in a rural British village with her Great-Aunt Charlotte and seemingly no adventures or friends in sight. But a chance encounter with a pair of mysterious cats leads Mary into the nearby forest, where she finds an old broom stuck in the overgrowth of a nearby tree, and the strange blue glow of the fly-by-night flower, a rare plant that blossoms only once every seven years. As the broom comes to life and lifts Mary high into the skies, she discovers a mysterious school for witches above the clouds. But the charming headmistress Madam Mumblechook and bumbling Doctor Dee are not all that they appear, in a twisting tale that reveals even the most ordinary-seeming children are capable of the most extraordinary adventures. Based on the 1971 children's novel The Little Broomstick, which was itself an inspiration for the Harry Potter stories, Mary and the Witch's Flower is an all-ages action adventure that harkens back to some of the most beloved animated films of all time, full of ingenious characters, jaw-dropping, imaginative worlds and the simple, heartfelt story of a young girl trying to figure her place in the world.