The wind in Nausicaä’s valley
There’s a moment six minutes into Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind where the protagonist glides on a small jet-powered hang glider over a sea of toxic fungus. The wind is warm. The colors are golden and rust and pale blue. The plants are deadly and beautiful and indifferent. Below her is a small valley protected by ocean winds where humans live in a sustainable agrarian society alongside windmills that look like art-nouveau sculptures. The film is from 1984. The term “solarpunk” wouldn’t be coined for another 24 years. Hayao Miyazaki was already drawing the future the movement would later try to articulate in words.
Solarpunk’s literary canon is small and growing. Its visual canon is older and richer than people realize, because Studio Ghibli has been making solarpunk films for forty years without using the word. Here’s a watch list. Some are explicitly solarpunk. Most are proto-solarpunk or solarpunk-adjacent films whose visual language the movement directly inherits.
What makes a film “solarpunk”
Working definition: films where humans and nature exist in a relationship that isn’t extractive; where biological abundance and renewable technology coexist visually; where the central conflict isn’t disaster but how to live well. Not utopia. Not dystopia. Imaginatively plausible futures (or pasts, or fantasies) of working out the relationship.
The list
1. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) — Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli
Post-apocalyptic Earth recovering through fungal succession. A young princess negotiates between humans and the toxic ecosystem trying to reclaim the land. The foundational text. Watch this first.
2. Princess Mononoke (1997) — Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli
Iron-age industrial expansion meets ancient forest spirits. The film refuses to villainize either side — both have legitimate needs. The negotiation between civilization and nature is solarpunk’s central question.
3. Castle in the Sky (1986) — Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli
A floating city covered in vines, abandoned by humans, maintained by a single robot tending its gardens. The visual archetype of “what civilization looks like when nature reclaims it.” Influenced every solarpunk illustrator since.
4. My Neighbor Totoro (1988) — Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli
Not science fiction. Two kids in 1950s rural Japan encounter forest spirits. The film argues for the wonder of being embedded in a living landscape. Solarpunk’s most quietly influential text.
5. Wall-E (2008) — Andrew Stanton / Pixar
Earth abandoned after corporate-driven environmental collapse. A trash-compacting robot finds the last plant. The first hour is the most damning critique of consumer culture in animation. The third act argues humans can come back.
6. The Wild Robot (2024) — Chris Sanders / DreamWorks
A delivery robot shipwrecks on an uninhabited island and learns to live with the local ecosystem. Becomes a parent to an orphaned gosling. Visually gorgeous and thematically central to solarpunk’s “technology serves life” thesis.
7. Spirited Away (2001) — Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli
A girl trapped in a spirit world bathhouse. The “stink spirit” scene — a river god polluted into rage and silt — is one of the most direct environmental critiques in family animation. Watch for that scene alone.
8. The Boy and the Heron (2023) — Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli
Miyazaki’s late masterpiece. A boy enters a parallel world managed by his ailing great-uncle. About the responsibility of inheriting a damaged world and choosing whether to maintain or rebuild it. The most directly solarpunk-themed Ghibli film of the last decade.
9. Tales from Earthsea (2006) — Gorô Miyazaki / Studio Ghibli
Adapted from Le Guin. Patchy execution but the underlying material is proto-solarpunk to the core. Worth watching for the philosophical content even if the pacing wobbles.
10. Avatar / Avatar: The Way of Water (2009 / 2022) — James Cameron
Pandora as a fully interconnected biosphere where humans are the invasive technology. The films get critiqued for white-savior narrative; the worldbuilding is genuinely solarpunk in its ecology.
11. Pom Poko (1994) — Isao Takahata / Studio Ghibli
Tanuki (Japanese raccoon-dogs) fighting suburban development in 1970s Tokyo. Slapstick exterior; devastating ecological argument underneath. The forest-loss montage is unforgettable.
12. Cloud Atlas (2012) — Wachowski sisters / Tom Tykwer
Six interconnected stories spanning centuries. The post-collapse “Sloosha’s Crossin'” sequence imagines a survivor culture maintaining technological remnants alongside agricultural community. Far from a pure solarpunk film, but the ending makes a hopepunk argument worth seeing.
Honorable mentions
- The Secret World of Arrietty — Ghibli, miniature-scale biophilia
- Annihilation (2018) — Alex Garland, anti-extractive science fiction
- Children of Men (2006) — technically dystopian but the ending makes a hopepunk turn
- Whisper of the Heart (1995) — Ghibli, small-scale dignity-of-place
- Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) — Ghibli, anti-war / vernacular technology
- The Lighthouse of Orcas Island — recent indie animation, looks solarpunk
FAQs
Is there a directly “solarpunk” feature film with that label?
Not yet. Several short films use the label (Dear Alice, The Fourth Industrial Revolution shorts). A feature with explicit solarpunk branding is still being awaited.
Why so much Ghibli?
Because Studio Ghibli has been the most consistent producer of biophilic, nature-engaged, anti-extractive animation for forty years. They built the visual grammar solarpunk inherited.
Are there live-action solarpunk films?
Few. Cloud Atlas’s final story counts. Annihilation partially. Most solarpunk-adjacent storytelling is in animation, partly because animation can render unfamiliar ecosystems more cheaply than CGI.
What about TV / streaming series?
Scavengers Reign (2023, HBO Max) is the closest. The Last of Us tells an interesting story of nature-after-collapse. Beastars touches solarpunk themes. The category is small but growing.
Where can I find more solarpunk shorts?
Search YouTube for “solarpunk short film.” Dear Alice is the standard recommendation. The Solarpunk Showcase on Vimeo curates several.
Are there any solarpunk video games?
Yes, growing list: Terra Nil, Stardew Valley (proto-solarpunk farming), A Short Hike, Lake. Cozy gaming and solarpunk overlap heavily.
The landing
The image of Nausicaä gliding over the toxic jungle is one Miyazaki drew in 1984 and the solarpunk movement is still trying to put into words four decades later. The visual canon is older than the literary one because animators saw what writers hadn’t yet articulated. If you want to understand what solarpunk is reaching for, watch the Ghibli filmography in order. The future arrived in the 1980s. We just haven’t built it yet.