Howl's Moving Castle

Howl's Moving Castle is a 2004 Japanese animated film directed by Hayao Miyazaki for Studio Ghibli, adapted from Diana Wynne Jones's novel, following a young milliner named Sophie who is cursed into the body of an elderly woman by a jealous witch and seeks out the wizard Howl, whose enormous walking castle roams the countryside, in hopes of breaking the spell. Miyazaki reshaped the story around a strong anti-war theme, adding an ongoing war between rival kingdoms largely absent from the novel, a change widely understood as his response to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The film was a major commercial success, becoming one of the highest grossing Japanese films ever made at the time of its release, and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature.