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After a teenage boy and girl start magically swapping bodies, they endeavour to meet. But a looming natural catastrophe threatens to destroy any chance of their blossoming love.

‘Makoto Shinkai established himself as Hayao Miyazaki’s heir apparent with this glorious existential teen drama… It starts out as a playful, visually dazzling riff on body-swap comedy tropes, with small-town girl Mitsuha and Tokyoite Taki intermittently, and unwittingly, hijacking one another’s physical forms. Once the pair, who’ve never met, figure out what’s going on, they find inventive ways to communicate with one each other, and thus begin to form a uniquely intimate bond.

Just as it starts to look like things are heading in a quirkily romantic but somewhat predictable direction, a seismic twist ups the stakes dramatically for all concerned. The scene is thus set for a breathtaking final act that marries the race-against-the-clock exuberance of Back to the Future 1985 with the transcendentalism of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life 2011.’ British Film Institute