Kensuke's Kingdom is a 2023 animated adventure film based on the 1999 children's novel by Michael Morpurgo. The film debuted at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on 11 June 2023. The UK premiere was at the 67th BFI London Film Festival on 14 October 2023. The general release in France was on 7 February 2024, under the title Le Royaume de Kensuké.
The film was nominated for the inaugural BAFTA Award for Best Children's & Family Film at the 78th British Academy Film Awards, though it lost to Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Premise A boy and his dog Stella are swept overboard during a storm on a worldwide sailing trip with his family, he washes ashore on an island in the Pacific Ocean. There, he meets with a Japanese WWII straggler, Kensuke, from Nagasaki.
Cast Aaron MacGregor as Michael Morpurgo Sally Hawkins as Mum Cillian Murphy as Dad Ken Watanabe as Kensuke Raffey Cassidy as Becky
Production It was announced in February 2019 that an animated film adaptation of the children's novel Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo was in development, with Sally Hawkins, Cillian Murphy, Ken Watanabe and Raffey Cassidy set as part of the voice cast, like the novel following a fictionalised version of Morpurgo himself as he is stranded on a desert island as a child.
In September 2020, the film entered production after securing new financing. Animation was provided primarily by the Cardiff-based firm Bumpybox.
Reception . Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
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References
External links
Kensuke’s Kingdom (2024); BFI Kensuke's Kingdom official website