Spirited Away (2001), written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, follows ten-year-old Chihiro who becomes trapped in a spirit world while her parents are transformed into pigs — and must work in a bathhouse for spirits to find a way to rescue them and return home.

Why It Matters

• Won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature and the Golden Bear at Berlin — the only anime film to win the Palme d'Or equivalent at a major festival
• The highest-grossing film in Japanese history for nearly 20 years
• Miyazaki's world-building — the spirit bathhouse, the radish spirit, the faceless No-Face — is endlessly inventive and steeped in Shinto mythology

Made without a completed script, with Miyazaki developing the story day by day during production, the film captures a child's experience of a terrifying adult world with a precision and emotional honesty that no other animated film has matched.

Reference:

Wikipedia: Spirited Away

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirited_Away