Japanese animation film production house Studio Ghibli is set to receive the Honorary Palme d'Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. It is the first-ever occasion where a company is receiving the Cannes Film Festival's award; earlier recipients included only individuals.

“For the first time in our history, it’s not a person but an institution that we have chosen to celebrate,” stated Cannes Festival general delegate Thierry Frémaux and president Iris Knobloch as they announced the honour. They praised the animated features of the production house that are full of characters “populating people's imaginations with prolific, colorful universes and sensitive, engaging narrations. With Ghibli, Japanese animation stands as one of the great adventures of cinephilia, between tradition and modernity.”

Hayao Miyazaki, Toshio Suzuki, Yasuyoshi Tokuma, and Isao Takahata founded Studio Ghibli in 1985. Over the last 40 years, the studio has “achieved what seemed to be an impossible feat: Independently producing pure masterpieces and conquering the mass market,” stated the festival.

“I am truly honored and delighted that the studio is awarded the Honorary Palme d’or. I would like to thank the Festival de Cannes from the bottom of my heart,” stated Toshio Suzuki.

The studio is best known for films such as Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away. Its most recent film The Boy and the Heron from director Miyazaki won the Best Animated Feature Film at the 2024 Academy Awards.