MANILA, Philippines – The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) is inviting fans across Asia to send questions for Japanese filmmaker and Studio Ghibli co-founder Miyazaki Hayao, who was one of RMAF’s 2024 awardees.
According to RMAF’s Facebook post on Sunday, September 29, children and children-at-heart can ask Miyazaki questions about his life and work.
Those interested in sending their question can submit it through a 30-second video along with their name, age, city, and country to digital@rmaward.asia until October 11. Chosen questions will be featured in his upcoming lecture, although details about the lecture have yet to be announced.
Together with Toshio Suzuki and Isao Takhati, Miyazaki founded Studio Ghibli in 1985. The internationally acclaimed animation studio is known for films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, Ponyo, Castle in the Sky, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Spirited Away, which won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2003. In May 2024, Studio Ghibli also received an honorary Palme d’Or at the 77th Cannes Film Festival.
In 2021, the then 80-year-old filmmaker announced his break from retirement to create what could possibly be his final Ghibli film — The Boy and the Heron. Miyazaki first announced his retirement in 2013, shortly after the release of the Wind Rises.
Meanwhile, The Boy and The Heron, Miyazaki’s semi-autobiographical animated movie about a boy grieving over his late mother, won the best animated feature film Oscar in 2024.
Miyazaki was announced as one of the five 2024 Ramon Magsaysay Awardees last August. The Japanese filmmaker was recognized for “his lifelong commitment to the use of art, specifically animation, to illuminate the human condition, especially lauding his devotion to children as the torchbearers of the imagination, to whom he has passed the light and spark of his own.”
RMAF also noted that through animation, Miyazaki tackles complicated issues by making them comprehensible to children, instead of simplifying the plot of his stories. They also lauded the filmmaker’s “devotion to children as the torchbearers of the imagination.”
Aside from Miyazaki, the other 2024 Ramon Magsaysay Award recipients include activist Farwiza Farhan of Indonesia, as well as health advocates Vietnam’s Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong and Thailand’s Rural Doctors Movement. – with additional reports from Rev dela Cruz/Rappler.com
Rev dela Cruz is a Rappler intern studying AB Journalism at the University of Santo Tomas.
