‘When Marnie Was There’ Nominated for Oscar

A scene from Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s “When Marnie Was There.”

Studio Ghibli’s “When Marnie Was There” has received an Academy Award nomination in the Best Animated Feature Film category.

Nominations for the 88th annual Academy Awards were announced on Jan. 14 at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theatre in Beverly Hills by Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, directors Guillermo Del Toro and Ang Lee, and actor John Krasinski.

The ceremony will be held on Feb. 28 at the Dolby Theater at Hollywood & Highland Center and will be televised on ABC.

Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi (“The Secret World of Arrietty”) and based on a novel by Joan G. Robinson, “When Marnie Was There” is about an emotionally distant adolescent girl who is sent to live with relatives in the countryside, where she becomes obsessed with an abandoned mansion and infatuated with a girl who lives there — a girl who may or may not be real.

Yonebayashi and producer Yoshiaki Nishimura were named as nominees.

Also nominated were Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson and Rosa Tran for “Anomalisa”; Ale Abreu for “Boy and the World”; Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera for “Inside Out”; Mark Burton and Richard Starzak for “Shaun the Sheep Movie.”

This is the fifth time that a Japanese animated film has been nominated. All are from Studio Ghibli. Hayao Miyazaki won in 2003 for “Spirited Away” and was nominated for “Howl’s Moving Castle” in 2006 and “The Wind Rises” in 2014. Isao Takahata was nominated in 2015 for “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.”

Yonebayashi, who left Studio Ghibli in 2014, worked as a key animator on such films as Hayao Miyazaki’s “Ponyo” and Goro Miyazaki’s “From Up on Poppy Hill.”

“When Marnie Was There” (Japanese title: “Omoide no Maanii”) has also received three Annie Award nominations for Best Animated Feature-Independent, Outstanding Achievement in Directing in an Animated Feature Production, and Outstanding Achievement in Writing in an Animated Feature Production.

The movie won the Young People’s Jury Award at the TIFF Kids International Film Festival and the Films4Families Youth Jury Award at the Seattle International Film Festival.