A Studio Ghibli classic from 1988, Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro is essentially the dearest, most charming thing you could ever hope to watch on screen and it doesn’t even have any yawning kittens or sneezing pandas in it. Two little girls, Satsuki and Mei, move with their dad to an old country house to be close to their hospitalised and much-missed mother. As they explore their new home they come across a number of friendly spirits and the enigmatically strong, mostly silent Totoro, who has control over his own visibility. As their mother’s ailments flare – leading to sibling spats – Totoro’s their only hope.

This is Totoro’s first outing in film and it’s a remarkable debut performance from a formidable young talent. Of course he’s now one of the most recognisable Japanese icons, going on to appear in the subsequent children’s films Pom Poko and Kiki’s Delivery Service. He stunned critics when he made a risqué cameo in Comedy Central’s Drawn Together that was not unlike Daniel Radcliffe’s turn in Equus.