Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (時をかける少女, 2010) is a Japanese sci-fi drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Masaaki Taniguchi. It continues the story from Mamoru Hosoda's beloved 2006 anime, this time as a live-action film. Riisa Naka plays Akari Yoshiyama, a high school senior whose life shifts when her mother — a pharmacologist with a secret past — is left unconscious after a car accident.

Akari discovers that her mother once had the ability to leap through time and left something unfinished in 1972. She travels back four decades, into a world that has none of the landmarks she grew up with, to find the man her mother loved and never said goodbye to. The 1972 sequences are built around a simple, uncomfortable fact: the people there don't know what comes next, and Akari does.

Munetaka Aoki co-stars. Where the anime ran on momentum and lightness, this film sits with what grief and longing feel like across decades. Stream The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2010) online on iFILM.