Mary and The Witch's Flower

Mary and The Witch's Flower (2017) is a hand-drawn fantasy adventure you can watch online on iFILM. Ten-year-old Mary is parked at her great-aunt's house in the quiet countryside for the summer, with nothing to do but wander an old forest and chase a stray cat.

The cat leads her to a strange blue blossom that flowers only once every seven years. One squeeze of this "fly-by-night" brings a battered broom to life, and it whisks Mary above the clouds to Endor College, a school of magic in the sky. The staff mistake her for a gifted new student, so she fibs that she comes from a powerful line of witches. But the magic at Endor smells of trouble: headmistress Mumblechook and Doctor Dee want the flower for themselves, and one small lie threatens to spiral into disaster.

This was the debut feature of Studio Ponoc, founded by former Ghibli artists, with director Hiromasa Yonebayashi already behind Arrietty and When Marnie Was There. It adapts Mary Stewart's children's book The Little Broomstick. Warm, painterly animation and a tagline that warns: from a single lie, everything will change. Stream Mary and The Witch's Flower (2017) online on iFILM.