The Boy and the Heron, supposedly the final film from Japanese master director Hayao Miyazaki, has won the Oscar for best animated feature film at the 96th Academy Awards in Los Angeles.

Inspired by Genzaburō Yoshino’s 1937 novel How Do You Live?, The Boy and the Heron is the loosely autobiographical story of a young boy during the second world war, searching for his mother in a mysterious fantasy world; on its UK release it was described as “a mysterious and charming fantasy that circles back to Miyazaki’s classic themes of childhood pain and grief” by the Guardian’s chief film critic Peter Bradshaw.

While the Guardian’s visit to Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli office in December suggested that the 83-year-old director is not actively planning further feature films, Ghibli’s vice-president Junichi Nishioka denied that Miyazaki is planning to retire, saying in September that he is “already coming into the office with new ideas”.

Miyazaki remains by far the most high-profile Japanese animator in the west, winning scores of awards including the best animated feature Oscar in 2003 for Spirited Away and receiving two further Oscar nominations for Howl’s Moving Castle and The Wind Rises, in 2006 and 2014 respectively.

Read more about the 2024 Oscars:

• Here’s our news wrap and full list of winners – now read Peter Bradshaw’s verdict
• Al Pacino, British mothers and a codpiece envelope: the real winners and losers of the night
• Relive how the ceremony unfolded with our liveblog and get up to speed with the top viral moments and the best quotes of the night
• Have a gander at how the stars looked on the red carpet and at the show