Film · 2010
The Secret World of Arrietty
借りぐらしのアリエッティ
Tiny Borrowers live beneath human floorboards, gathering the supplies they need without being seen. When Arrietty is discovered by a human boy, a friendship crosses the boundary on which her hidden life depends. Familiar domestic space becomes an environment scaled to very different inhabitants.
Gathering supplies is ordinary work for Arrietty, but visibility changes the conditions that make it possible. The friendship therefore puts curiosity beside a practical rule of survival. The film adapts Mary Norton’s The Borrowers, giving an everyday human room a second set of inhabitants and risks.
The human house sits within dense, overgrown greenery. For inhabitants as small as Arrietty, the surroundings of a familiar home can be as extensive as a landscape. Leaves and stalks do more than decorate the setting: their scale helps explain why a short distance for a human can contain an adventure for a Borrower.
Standalone animated film · Approx. 94 min · one film
The original 2010 standalone animated film. Excludes source books, live-action versions and unrelated adaptations.