Four-year-old Kun welcomes his baby sister, Mirai, into the family. Frustrated by his parents’ divided attention, Kun refuses to accept her and runs off to the garden. There, he meets his humanised dog and Mirai from the future. Together, they embark on an adventure through many timelines, past and present.

Directed by Mamoru Hosoda and released in 2018, Mirai follows the common theme of his films—a slice of life infused with heartfelt, magical, and fantastical moments. While the film does not have a single evil character or a grand showdown, Hosoda emphasises each character’s internal conflicts and displays complicated emotions through a four-year-old boy. Mirai is an honest portrait of family relationships, zooming into the quarrels, frustration, anger, and genuine love and care a family entails.

Mamoru Hosoda (b. 1967, Japan) is a renowned film director, scriptwriter, and animator. Hosoda started at Toei Animation, where he directed pop culture titles such as Digimon: The Movie (2000) and One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island (2005). His first independent film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) gained popularity through word of mouth and won the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year in 2007. Hosoda founded his own animation studio, Studio Chizu, in 2011, which produced his subsequent films Wolf Children (2012), The Boy and the Beast (2015), Mirai (2018), and Belle (2021).