Hayao Miyazaki to Receive Career Achievement Award From Los Angeles Film Critics

The famed animation director will be honored at the critics' Jan. 12 awards dinner.

Animation director Hayao Miyazaki will be honored by The Los Angeles Film Critics Association with a Career Achievement Award at the organization’s annual awards dinner Jan. 12 at the InterContinental Hotel in Century City, Calif.

LAFCA’s other top awards will be voted by the membership Dec. 9, and those winners will be honored along with Miyazaki at the dinner.

Miyazaki's films include Spirited Away (which won the 2002 LAFCA Award for best animation), My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Howl’s Moving Castle; the director is co-founder of Japan’s Studio Ghibli.

“We are thrilled to be presenting our Career Achievement award to Hayao Miyazaki, who has transported our members — and audiences around the world — to his enchanting, indelible and vividly imaginative worlds through his gorgeous and thematically rich animation,” LAFCA president Claudia Puig said in announcing the honor. “The way in which Miyazaki inspires an audience’s sense of wonder is unmatched. I particularly admire his depiction of self-sufficient, determined and courageous female characters who don’t need saving. He has explained his cinematic approach simply: ‘Any woman is just as capable of being a hero as any man.’ These words resonate more powerfully than ever in our current times.”

Miyazaki is currently working on a feature length film called How Do You Live?, which is expected to be released by 2020.