Florence Miailhe’s “La Traversée”, an award-winning film at the last Annecy animation festival, was released in theaters on September 29. Using the technique of animated painting, this feature film recounts with poetry and sensitivity the drama of exile.
Giving life to decorations and characters painted on glass plates: this is the principle of animated painting. A precision technique (in case of error, you have to start all over) which has become the signature of Florence Miailhe. For Crossing, her first feature film, the director worked with three animation studios among which The Menagerie in Tournefeuille, in Haute-Garonne.
It was in 2006 that the idea of making an animated film on the theme of migrants germinated in Florence Miailhe’s mind. Yet at the time, although it won a César for best short film (On the first Sunday in August in 2002), the director struggles to convince the producers. The news will then give it a boost. From 2011, after the Arab revolutions, hundreds of thousands of people flee their countries at war. The project is now on track. It will take another 10 years including three years of hard work in the studio for the film to see the light of day.
Co-written with journalist and novelist Marie Desplechin, Crossing tells the story of a brother and a sister driven from their country by a totalitarian regime. A topical story and yet as old as the world, as Luc Camili, co-producer of the film underlines: “It is at the same time a film which is topical and also timeless since it speaks of exile, immigration, subjects which cross the history for a very long time.“. And to translate all the emotion of a very sensitive theme, the choice of animated painting takes on its full meaning. An artisanal and artistic technique in which the designer, the animator puts a large part of himself. Florence Miailhe has made it her trademark, but this time, given the scale of the project, she had to delegate.
For three years, the director coordinated the work of fifteen animators and three teams spread between France, Germany and the Czech Republic. The result is breathtaking. Crossing was awarded the jury prize at the last Annecy Animation Film Festival.
Crossing by Florence Miailhe was released in cinemas on Wednesday, September 29.
