Drawn, painted, and imagined

Animation Around the World

Animation travels easily, but it never comes from nowhere. These films reveal different production traditions and different relationships between visual invention, language, history, and place.

The route includes native works and clearly marked outside views. That distinction matters especially in animation, where a story’s setting and the creative home of its production can be continents apart.

Follow the country links to see each title alongside live action films rather than isolating animation as a world of its own.

The itinerary

Stop 1 · Japan · Native voice

Spirited Away 2001

A young girl’s passage through a spirit world joins hand-drawn abundance to Japanese folklore, work, appetite, and memory.

A sullen young girl whose parents are magically transformed becomes trapped in a fantastical bathhouse for spirits, where she must work, grow brave, and find a way to save her family. Hayao Miyazaki's wondrous, Oscar-winning masterpiece.
Continue into Japan cinema →
Stop 2 · China · Native voice

Ne Zha 2019

A familiar myth is rebuilt as a large-scale contemporary Chinese animated spectacle about fate and self-definition.

Born as the reincarnation of a demonic force and feared by everyone around him, a mischievous, rebellious boy-god is fated by prophecy to bring ruin — but sets out to defy his destiny and choose his own path. A record-breaking Chinese animated fantasy.
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Stop 3 · Poland · Native voice

Loving Vincent 2017

Thousands of oil-painted frames turn a biographical mystery into an international production with a distinct Polish creative center.

A young man delivering the painter Vincent van Gogh's final letter is drawn into investigating the mystery of the artist's death, interviewing those who knew him. Rendered entirely in hand-painted oil animation in van Gogh's own style, a singular biographical mystery.
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Stop 4 · Brazil · Native voice

The Boy and the World 2013

Simple lines and layered sound carry a Brazilian child through industrialization, inequality, and wonder.

Grieving his father's departure for the city, a small boy sets out from his village and tumbles into a dazzling, overwhelming world of machines and strange creatures. A nearly wordless, hand-drawn animated wonder about a child's-eye view of a modern country.
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Stop 5 · Peru · Native voice

Ainbo: Spirit of the Amazon 2021

A Peruvian-led adventure uses animation to center an Amazonian heroine and the threats facing her forest community.

A brave young Amazonian girl, guided by two comic animal spirits, sets out on a perilous journey to protect her rainforest home from a dark force threatening to destroy it. A colorful Peruvian animated adventure.
Continue into Peru cinema →
Stop 6 · Canada · Native voice

Ratchet & Clank 2016

A game adaptation supplies a route into Canada’s large, internationally connected animation and visual-effects sector.

When a villainous captain threatens the galaxy, an ambitious mechanic and a small defective robot team up with a squad of heroes to save the day. A family-friendly animated space adventure based on the video game.
Continue into Canada cinema →
Stop 7 · Iran · Outside view

Persepolis 2007

A French-led adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s memoir makes its outside production position compatible with intimate Iranian memory.

In striking black-and-white animation, a spirited Iranian girl comes of age through the fall of the Shah, the Islamic Revolution, and war, chafing against repression at home and exile abroad. Marjane Satrapi's vivid, personal graphic-memoir adaptation.
Continue into Iran cinema →
Stop 8 · Egypt · Outside view

The Prince of Egypt 1998

An American studio epic turns an ancient Egyptian setting into monumental musical animation from an unmistakably outside perspective.

Raised as brothers in the Egyptian royal house, Moses and Ramses are set on a collision course when Moses discovers his true heritage as a Hebrew and answers a divine call to free his enslaved people. DreamWorks' sweeping animated retelling of Exodus.
Continue into Egypt cinema →