Japanese animation master Miyazaki Hayao's "The Boy and the Heron" has won the 2024 Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. It is the second time Miyazaki has taken the prize in the category.

This year's Academy Awards were announced in Hollywood on Sunday.

"The Boy and the Heron" is a fantasy film about a boy who moves to the countryside after his mother's death during World War Two, and wanders into a mysterious world guided by a talking grey heron.

It is an original story written and directed by the 83-year-old Miyazaki. Its Japanese title references a Yoshino Genzaburo novel, whose English edition is titled "How do you live?"

Miyazaki says the novel deeply inspired him when he was a child.

No details of the film, not even a synopsis, were disclosed before its release in Japan in July last year.

Miyazaki has directed a number of blockbuster animation works, including "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind" and "My Neighbor Totoro."

His movie "Spirited Away" won the Academy award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2003.

Miyazaki announced his retirement in 2013, but later withdrew the decision.

"The Boy and the Heron" has won a Golden Globe Award in the United States, and also became the first Japanese movie to win a British Academy Film Award.