This screening is co-presented by WU Cinema and the WashU Office of Sustainability and is dedicated to the fight against climate change.

Please consider donating to Ujima, a non-profit service provider that supplies equitable access to food, education, and employment to communities in St. Louis. Please also consider donating to SEEDS, a program that engages students from marginalized and underrepresented backgrounds in hands-on opportunities in environmental sciences. During this screening, we will be popping our own popcorn and serving bulk candy distributed in WashU greenware to limit packaging waste. These three opportunities to support our natural environment bring us closer to Princess Mononoke, a hero in her world for consciously fighting for the coexistence of humanity and nature.

PRINCESS MONONOKE

Director Hayao Miyazaki
Country Japan
Year 1997
Running Time 134 minutes
Japanese with English subtitles

An action-packed epic, Princess Mononoke also doubles as a thoughtful meditation on humanity’s relationship with nature.

“The film’s strength lies in its refusal to paint either its arguments or its characters in black and white: There are no pure heroes, no clear-cut villains and no pat answers.” – Ernest Hardy, L.A. Weekly

“Beautifully constructed and painstakingly written, this is about as close to a perfect animated epic as you’re likely to get.” – Melanie McFarland, Seattle Times

“This imaginative and intriguing Anime deserves all the plaudits heaped upon it.” – Mark Dinning, Empire Magazine

While defending his village from a demonic boar-god, the young warrior Ashitaka becomes afflicted with a curse that grants him super-human power in battle but will eventually take his life. Traveling west to find a cure or meet his destiny, he journeys deep into sacred depths of the Great Forest where he meets San (Princess Mononoke), a girl raised by wolf-gods who is waging battle against the human outpost of Iron Town, on the edge of the forest. Mononoke is a force of nature – with blood smeared lips, riding bareback on a great white wolf, doing battle with both gods and humans, she is as iconic a figure as any from film, literature, or opera.