A midnight screening of “Spirited Away” (“Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi,” 2001) will take place on Friday, Oct. 21, at the Nuart Theatre, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Los Angeles.

Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning masterpiece helped redefine the possibilities of animation for American audiences and a generation of new filmmakers.

Wandering through an abandoned carnival site, 10-year-old Chichiro is separated from her parents and stumbles into a dream-like spirit world where she is put to work in a bathhouse for the gods, a place where all kinds of nonhuman beings come to refresh, relax and recharge. Here she encounters a vast menagerie of impossibly inventive characters — shape-shifting phantoms and spirits, some friendly, some less so — and must find the inner strength to outsmart her captors and return to her family.

Combining Japanese mythology with “Through the Looking Glass”-type whimsy, “Spirited Away” cemented Miyazaki’s reputation as an icon of inspired animation and wondrous, lyrical storytelling.

The cast includes: Miyu Irino, Mari Natsuki, Takashi Nait?, Yasuko Sawaguchi, Tatsuya Gashuin, Ryunosuke Kamiki, Yumi Tamai, Yo Oizumi, Koba Hayashi, Tsunehiko Kamij?, Takehiko Ono, Bunta Sugawara, Noriko Kitou, Shiro Saito, Ken Yasuda, Rumi H?ragi.

In Japanese with English subtitles. For more information, call (310) 473-8530 or visit www.landmarktheatres.com/los-angeles/nuart-theatre.

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