Filmmaker and editorial cartoonist Aurel will observe up his César-winner “Josep” with “Desert,” an animated Western set in France’s Cevennes mountain vary.
Pitched between a extra conventional oater and an “Indiana Jones” model journey and set within the late 19th century, “Desert” will observe a Mexico-born gunslinger exploring south-central France with a mysterious mission. Rediscovering his household’s ancestral land centuries after the spiritual wars compelled these kinsmen to flee, our caballero quickly steps in to guard a neighborhood clan from an oppressive landowner and his abusive henchmen.
“We wish to deliver collectively two universes that ought to don’t have anything to do with each other,” says the filmmaker.
The challenge will reunite a lot of the identical inventive staff behind 2020’s award-winning “Josep,” amongst them screenwriter Jean-Louis Milesi and producer Serge Lalou of Les Movies d’Ici Méditerranée, in addition to animation studios Les Fées Spéciales in Montpellier and Tchack in Lille. “We’re a household,” says Aurel.
A lot of that household was additionally available at this yr’s Cartoon Forum in Toulouse, the place Aurel and producers from Les Movies d’Ici offered their short-form collection “Animals in a Nutshell.”
Tailored from science journalist Nathaniel Herzberg’s zoology columns in newspaper Le Monde – the place Aurel labored as an editorial cartoonist for twenty years earlier than stepping down earlier this yr – the academic collection will discover the pure world with a playful and irreverent tone.
Dropped at life with feisty narration by singer and actor Camélia Jordana (“Irresistible”), every four-minute episode performs as an off-kilter slideshow, leaping from illustration to training to pure gags.
“Nathaniel’s voice could be very vigorous, very punchy,” says Aurel. “He can relay dense scientific and zoological analysis in a really humorous and accessible approach, and we wish to translate that model. Each Nathaniel and I work on severe topics with out taking ourselves too significantly.”
