The Wind Rises

The Wind Rises (風立ちぬ, 2013) is Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli film, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It follows a boy who could never fly, yet designed aircraft that outran their era.

Jiro Horikoshi is nearsighted, so a pilot's seat is out of reach. What he can do is draw. In his dreams the Italian designer Caproni keeps appearing, planting an idea: you don't have to fly to give others wings. Jiro grows up, takes an engineering job, lives through the quake that flattened Tokyo in 1923, and falls for Naoko, whose illness makes every shared day count. Meanwhile his country drifts toward war, and his graceful machines are wanted for anything but beauty.

This is Miyazaki at his most personal and grown-up — no witches, no dragons, just an engineer, a love story, and a hard question about a dreamer whose creation feeds destruction. Drawn from the life of the man behind the Zero fighter, the film earned an Academy Award nomination. Stream The Wind Rises (2013) online on iFILM.