Spirited Away is the greatest animated film ever made. That statement, once a matter of argument, has settled into near-consensus among critics and filmmakers worldwide. Hayao Miyazaki’s 2001 film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and has spent decades on top ten lists across every critical tradition.

Chihiro is ten years old, sulking in a car through what she believes is a boring move to a new town. When her parents are transformed into pigs, Chihiro is left alone in a spirit world she does not understand, populated by spirits, gods, witches, and things she has no name for. She has to work. She takes a job at a bathhouse run by the witch Yubaba.

Miyazaki’s world-building is without equivalent in animation. The spirits that populate the bathhouse feel genuinely imagined, as though they existed before the film and will continue after it.

And underneath the visual splendor is a story about a child learning to be brave, which is the oldest story and always the most necessary.