When Marnie Was There

2014 103 min ★ 7.9 Animation, Drama, Family

Upon being sent to live with relatives in the countryside due to an illness, an emotionally distant adolescent girl becomes obsessed with an abandoned mansion and infatuated with a girl who lives there - a girl who may or may not be real.

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Cast

Sara Takatsuki

Anna Sasaki (voice)

Kasumi Arimura

Marnie (voice)

Nanako Matsushima

Yoriko Sasaki (voice)

Susumu Terajima

Kiyomasa Oiwa (voice)

Toshie Negishi

Setsu Oiwa (voice)

Ryoko Moriyama

Elderly Lady (voice)

Kazuko Yoshiyuki

Nanny (voice)

Hitomi Kuroki

Hisako (voice)

Hiroyuki Morisaki

Art Teacher (voice)

Takuma Otoo

Neighborhood Association Officer (voice)

Details

Director

Hiromasa Yonebayashi

Screenplay

Masashi Ando

Tagline

"Promise we'll remain a secret, forever."

Status

Released

Original Language

JA

Revenue

$34,949,567

Production

Studio Ghibli, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners, KDDI, Nippon Television Network Corporation, TOHO, dentsu, The Walt Disney Company (Japan), Mitsubishi

Reviews

E

Ewa Wiman

April 18, 2015

★ 10/10

This is a very beautiful animated film from Studio Ghibli, possibly the last one to com out of Studioe Ghibli for some time or last one ever. It is about Anna, a young girl that we learn has asthma and is feeling very alone. She is sent to relatives in the country to recuperate from severe sickness. Once there she meets another young girl, who is blond and also has beautiful blue eyes like A...

R

Reno

June 16, 2015

★ 9/10

> Some people're destined to meet the secret friend. From the director Hiromasa Yonebayashi of 'The Secret World of Arriety' fame. Based on the 1967 English novel of the same name and so the important characters borrowed the western names. This is what I call a fine adaptation, great transformation from the words to the motion picture. Actually, it suited for the narration from the standpoint o...

C

CinemaSerf

August 4, 2026

★ 7/10

I thought there something of the "Rapunzel" to this story. "Anna" is a frail twelve year old girl who has never quite fitted in, and who has been sent by her caring foster-mother from her home in the city to spend the summer in a quiet town by the sea in the hope that it may have some recuperative effect. Whilst exploring one day, she encounters an home aptly named "Marsh House" inhabited by the m...