Arrietty the Borrower (2010)
Based on the 1952 novel The Borrowers by Mary Norton.
A boy named Shō remembers the week in summer spent at his mother's home with his maternal great aunt, Sadako, and the housemaid, Haru. When Shō arrives, he gets a glimpse of Arrietty, a Borrower girl, returning to her home through an underground air vent where she lives with her mother Homily, and her father Pod. The Borrowers are "tiny people" who are 10-cm tall and live under the floorboards of a typical human household. They call themselves "Borrowers" because they take items in the house that won't be missed if they disappear and only what they need to survive.
At night, Pod takes Arrietty on her first "borrowing" to get sugar and tissue paper. After obtaining a sugar cube from the kitchen, they travel to a bedroom which they enter through a dollhouse. It is Shō's bedroom; he sees Arrietty when she tries to take a tissue from his table. Startled, she drops the sugar cube. Shō tries to comfort her but Pod and Arrietty leave.
The next day, Shō puts the sugar cube and a little note beside the air vent. Pod warns her not to take it because their existence must be kept secret from humans. Nevertheless, she sneaks out to visit Shō in his bedroom. Without showing herself, she tells him to leave her family alone but they soon have a conversation, which is interrupted by a crow. The crow attacks Arrietty but Shō saves her. On her return home, Arrietty is intercepted by her father. Realizing they have been detected, Pod and his wife Homily decide they must move out and begin searching for new homes.
Shō learns from Sadako that some of his ancestors had noticed the presence of Borrowers in the house and had a fully functional dollhouse built for them. However the Borrowers had not been seen since.
One rainy night, Pod returns injured from a borrowing mission and is helped home by Spiller, a survivalist boy he met. Spiller knows of some places that might be options for a new home.
As the Borrowers continue to pack up their things, one day Shō removes the floorboard concealing the Borrower household and replaces their kitchen with the kitchen from the dollhouse to show that he hopes they can stay. However, the Borrowers are frightened by this and speed up their moving process. Pod recovers and Arrietty bids farewell to Shō. Shō apologises that he has forced them to move out and reveals he has had a heart condition since birth and will have an operation in a few days. The operation does not have a good chance of success. He is accepting, saying that every living thing dies.
Haru notices the floorboards have been disturbed. She unearths the Borrowers' house and captures Homily. Alerted by her mother's screams, Arrietty goes to investigate. Saddened by her departure, Shō returns to his room. Haru locks him in and calls a pest control company to capture the other Borrowers alive. Arrietty comes to Shō for help; they rescue Homily and he destroys all traces of the Borrowers’ presence.
On their way out during the night, the Borrowers are spotted by the cat Niya. Thereupon Niya leads Shō to the "river", a small rivulet, where the Borrowers are waiting for Spiller to take them further. Shō gives Arrietty a sugar cube and tells her that she will always be a part of him and that her courage and the Borrowers' fight for survival have made him want to live through the operation. In return, Arrietty gives him her hairclip, a small clothespin, as a token of remembrance. The Borrowers leave in a floating teapot with Spiller in search of a new home.
