Latest news with #FélixDufourLaperrière
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Standout Canadian Titles in Annecy's Official 2025 Lineup
Canada arrives at this year's Annecy International Animation Film Festival with a slate that is as diverse in tone and subject matter as it is rich in innovation. From searing political features to whimsical short films, Canadian creators once again prove they are major players in the global animation arena. Here's a closer look at some of the high-profile Canadian titles and co-productions in the official selection at this year's festival. FEATURE FILMS – OFFICIAL COMPETITION More from Variety Preserving the Past and Powering the Future of Canadian Animation: Inside the NFB and Telefilm's Industry-Leading Support Strategies Immersive Domes, Checkered-Eared Rabbits and a New Platform: Hungary to Showcase 111 Years of Animation as Annecy Country of Honor Animation and Heart: The Directors of Gkids Pick-Up 'Little Amélie' Reflect on Collaborative Spirit in Bringing 'The Character of Rain' to Screen 'Allah Is Not Obliged,' Zaven Najjar (Belgium, Canada, France, Luxembourg) Based on Ahmadou Kourouma's celebrated novel, this animated adaptation by Zaven Najjar is a bold and harrowing account of a child soldier's journey through West Africa's brutal civil wars. Blending animation with documentary-style narration, Najjar crafts a visually arresting and emotionally resonant exploration of violence, survival and lost innocence. 'Death Does Not Exist,' Félix Dufour-Laperrière Following his acclaimed 'Archipelago,' Dufour-Laperrière returns with another poetic, philosophically rich feature. 'Death Does Not Exist' is less a narrative film and more an existential meditation, layering hand-drawn textures and voiceovers into a lyrical journey through memory, loss and metaphysical wonder. FEATURE FILMS – CONTRECHAMP COMPETITION 'Endless Cookie,' Seth Scriver, Pete Scriver The Scriver brothers dive into absurdist territory with 'Endless Cookie,' a surreal, offbeat tale that plays like a stoner parable for late-stage capitalism. Their crudely charming animation style belies sharp social commentary, as a group of misfits chase after a never-ending dessert. 'Space Cadet' – Eric San aka Kid Koala Musician and multimedia artist Kid Koala ventures into feature-length animation with 'Space Cadet,' based on his 2011 graphic novel. This dialogue-free sci-fi story is narrated through music and motion, as a young girl astronaut navigates space and solitude. The film is deeply atmospheric, combining handmade aesthetics with an emotive, electronic score to craft a meditative journey about separation and connection. SHORT FILM COMPETITION 'Bread Will Walk,' Alex Boya Alex Boya's signature style, precise draftsmanship blended with chaotic surrealism, is on full display in this nightmarish parable featuring the voice work of Jay Baruchel. 'Bread Will Walk' blurs the line between grotesque comedy and cautionary tale as sentient bread zombies trudge through a broken world. 'Fusion,' Richard Reeves Known for using direct-on-film animation, Richard Reeves returns with 'Fusion,' a kinetic, abstract short scored by a pulsating jazz composition. Every frame is a painted rhythm, forming a hypnotic experience that's more musical than narrative. Reeves continues to push boundaries with meditative control and explosive energy. 'Hairy Legs,' Andrea Dorfman Dorfman, known for her feminist lens and handmade style, delivers an empowering short that's playful yet poignant. 'Hairy Legs' is a colorful ode to body autonomy, presenting one woman's decision to embrace her natural self in a society obsessed with grooming. 'The Girl Who Cried Pearls,' Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski This hauntingly beautiful fable from the Clyde Henry duo blends stop-motion, puppetry and gothic design into a dark fairytale. Following a girl who cries pearls and the boy who secretly falls in love with her, the story is rich with symbolic depth, tackling themes of exploitation, desire and transformation. Lavis and Szczerbowski have crafted one of the year's most visually arresting animated shorts, and this title should get lots of awards recognition as the year progresses. 'The Gnawer of Rocks,' Louise Flaherty An Inuit tale reimagined through atmospheric animation, 'The Gnawer of Rocks' is both a cultural preservation and a chilling tale. Flaherty's work stands out for its minimalistic style and narrative restraint, letting the stark beauty of Arctic folklore speak for itself. PERSPECTIVES 'Bloody Mess,' Megan Wennberg A raw, satirical take on menstrual stigma, 'Bloody Mess' turns a taboo into animated liberation, balancing personal anecdotes with educational bite. It's advocacy through absurdism: accessible, memorable and necessary. 'Ibuka, Justice,' Justice Rutikara This powerful documentary revisits the Rwandan genocide through the lens of Canadian survivors and justice seekers. Rutikara uses spare visuals and voice-driven storytelling to navigate trauma, remembrance and the pursuit of reconciliation. YOUNG AUDIENCES 'The Great Annual Party of the Creatures of the Moon,' Francis Desharnais A joyful, whimsical entry for younger viewers, Desharnais's film celebrates difference and community through a lunar festival attended by eccentric monsters. With charming visuals and a celebratory tone, the film offers a gentle allegory on inclusion and self-acceptance. GRADUATION FILMS 'Passageways,' Geneviève Tremblay, Milla Cummings From emerging talents Tremblay and Cummings comes a dreamlike, nonlinear short exploring themes of identity and change. Fluid transitions and morphing landscapes evoke an emotional liminality, capturing the essence of growing up and moving on. A strong debut with visual and emotional sophistication. COMMISSIONED FILMS CNESST 'Hanging by a Thread,' Dale Hayward, Pierre Dalpé A compelling safety PSA, 'Hanging by a Thread' uses stop-motion to dramatize the fragility of workplace well-being. Hayward and Dalpé bring their tactile expertise to an urgent public issue, wrapping advocacy in captivating visuals that demand attention. 'South of Midnight,' Chris Lavis, Maciek Szczerbowski This atmospheric teaser for the upcoming video game 'South of Midnight' brings Lavis and Szczerbowski's moody craftsmanship into the gaming world. Blending Southern Gothic imagery with meticulous stop-motion, the spot sets a tone of eerie beauty and narrative intrigue. Trailer: 22nd Sommets du cinéma d'animation de Montréal, Daniel Gies A vibrant, energetic showcase, Gies' trailer captures the spirit of Montreal's leading animation festival with flair, combining dynamic movement with a celebration of artistic diversity. Best of Variety 25 Hollywood Legends Who Deserve an Honorary Oscar New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Animated Program — Can Netflix Score Big With 'Arcane,' 'Devil May Cry' and the Final Season of 'Big Mouth?'
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Annecy Contender ‘Death Does Not Exist' by Félix Dufour-Laperrière Gets Political: ‘There's Urgency to Redistribute Wealth'
Annecy main comoetition contender 'Death Does Not Exist' is a political film. And Quebec director Félix Dufour-Laperrière isn't afraid to admit it. 'There's urgency to redistribute wealth. There's urgency to keep this world decent. I'm a father of two: a middle-class white man with a beautiful family, and one of my deepest desires is that my kids grow up in a livable world. On the other hand, there's a legitimate anger about the state of the world that needs to be addressed. Mine and yours, and obviously our American neighbors,' he tells Variety about his latest animated feature. More from Variety Guillermo del Toro-Backed El Taller del Chucho, Fasten Films, Martfilms Team on 'Sira and the Secret of the Park,' From Adrià García, Ángeles Cruz (EXCLUSIVE) Bread Zombies, Operatic Tapeworms, Nuclear Fallout and Storm Trooper Trauma Feature in our 10 Shorts Not to Miss at Annecy 2025 Anime-Inspired 'Miraculous' Spinoff 'Miraculous Stellar Force' Acquired by Disney With a 2025 Special and 2027 Series Launch Planned (EXCLUSIVE) 'The film comes from all these contradictions. It's crucial to take care of what you love, but it's not sufficient when we have a collective responsibility toward the world. It's a tragic tale about violence, but also about commitment, convictions, loyalty and connections.' In 'Death Does Not Exist' – which premiered in Cannes Directors' Fortnight – an idealistic girl, Hélène, flees to the forest after a botched armed attack on an uber-wealthy family. Her comrades are gone, but visions of one of them, Manon, continue to haunt her. Just like her personal and political choices. 'I wanted to focus on her paradoxical loyalty towards her moral beliefs, friendship and love. And to show direct consequences of violence: for those who suffer from it and for those who commit it,' notes Dufour-Laperrière. As Hélène ventures deeper and deeper into wild nature, not unlike Tarkovsky's 'The Zone' – 'Stalker' is one of my fetish films' – she makes a 'Faustian pact' with Manon. 'It's very dense at the beginning and very dense at the end, and there's a more reflexive moment in the middle. In my eyes, there's a reality to it even if it's dreamlike. They witness their desires coming to life. Conscious ones, like political and social upheavals, but also unconscious desire of starting something new.' He adds: 'In the realm of animation, everything is real.' 'It has been said before: form IS political. The way you look at things and people, it is political. A still drawing works, but it's obvious: a moving image is unstable and evolving. I like the idea that in animation, you can embody concepts and feelings, but it's all in movement. You can only grasp a part of it.' His protagonist, while not exactly your usual hero and fueled by 'tragic courage,' gets to confront some of the people she's been rallying against. 'Visually, they share the same context, the same color. But they also share some truths. I have mixed feelings towards what these kids are doing, but it says something about their convictions and their beliefs. I'm certainly not encouraging acts of violence or excusing them, but violence exists. Also, the word is being confiscated – by a minority. And those who get their part confiscated cannot just let it go.' At first, his film was much darker. 'It was a very, very fatalistic tale. Later, I tried to open it up a bit to give more space to life, connections. I did try to be honest with my own experiences and beliefs while writing it. I'm a pessimistic guy, but I love life,' he admits. In 2021, Dufour-Laperrière was awarded at Annecy for 'Archipelago.' But with its political flair, 'Death Does Not Exist' wasn't exactly an easy sell. 'We're lucky to have pretty strong public funding in Quebec and Canada. And once it's funded, we go all in. That's the reason why I produced it myself, with my brother Nicolas [for Embuscade Films]. To own the production means to put all the money on screen.' Emmanuel-Alain Raynal (Miyu Productions) and Pierre Baussaron (Miyu Distribution) are also on board, alongside Best Friend Forever and UFO Distribution. 'With our partners, we all know that we won't get rich selling this film. But it will be a fun ride.' Fun and serious, he underlines. 'In adult animation, we're all adults – we should be able to talk about the world and the things that move us. Being an adult is also about trying to name the depth of our shared experience and films, in my view, should do that as well. When my kids ask why I make them, I say: 'It's a way to live my life.' It's a beautiful way,' he says. 'Without wanting to sound pretentious, for me, art is a serious matter.' Best of Variety 25 Hollywood Legends Who Deserve an Honorary Oscar New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Animated Program — Can Netflix Score Big With 'Arcane,' 'Devil May Cry' and the Final Season of 'Big Mouth?'
CBC
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
'I wanted to make an October crisis film meets Alice in Wonderland'
The Quebec director of the animated film Death Does Not Exist, brings it to Cannes Death Does Not Exist director Félix Dufour-Laperrière is grappling with an existential crisis that many of us looking out in the world today will find relatable. The Quebec filmmaker says he holds onto the "very strong social democratic beliefs" that defined him when he was "young and very intense." But today he's a father of two, and, for the sake of self-preservation, can't be as outspoken about his ideals when looking out at a world that is becoming violently inhospitable to so many different communities. "I first and foremost, want to protect my kids," says Dufour-Laperrière, on a Zoom call with CBC Arts. "But I wish that they lived in a livable world that is open to all." This nagging contradiction, or "paradox" as Dufour-Laperrière refers to it, is at the heart of the Archipelago director's latest feature premiering in the Director's Fortnight section at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday. The hand-drawn animation, in which colours painted on paper lend rich texture to the lush and often abstract digital landscapes, follows a young activist named Hélène confronts the same existential dilemmas haunting the filmmaker — albeit in a much more "intense and romantic way" as Dufour-Laperrière puts it. His film is about French-Canadian radicals willing to take violent action. Hélène is part of an armed collective who target an obscenely wealthy elderly couple at their fortified mansion. During a chaotic shootout with their target's security detail, Hélène backs out, leaving her comrades to die and instead embarks on a dreamy, soul-searching journey. She's haunted by her friends and her targets, alongside a little child and an older woman, all challenging her to consider the consequences of her actions and inactions, weighing the comfortable but meaningless life she could lead as the world crumbles around her or the way she will alienate everyone close to her in pursuit of a higher but costly ideal. "The film is about two impossibilities," says Dufour-Laperrière, "the impossibility of violence first and foremost but also the impossibility of the status quo. Once you put violence in the world you don't control the consequences. And yet how can you live when the status quo is not possible. It's a tragic tale about two impossibilities meeting." Death Does Not Exist doesn't address any specific political, social or global conflicts we're living through today, a narrative choice perhaps stemming from the very cautiousness the film is confronting. Though the question Dufour-Laperrière asks, through his characters, throughout the film can easily be posed to any of the most pertinent calamities today, especially since the abstract imagery is suggestive of so much: wealth inequality, food insecurity, the climate crisis and armed conflict are all there. The project actually began with a real historical reference point. "I wanted to make an October crisis film meets Alice in Wonderland in contemporary Quebec," says Dufour-Laperrière, referencing the violent 1970s conflict when militant separatists in Quebec kidnapped a British trade commissioner and murdered Quebec minister Pierre Laporte. Those incidents pushed then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to invoke the War Measures Act, allowing for a military occupation and mass arrests. The October Crisis was the subject in Gilles Groulx's critical and confrontational documentary 24 heures ou plus. Dufour-Laperrière counts that film as an aesthetic and thematic influence, alongside Groulx's political coming-of-age drama The Cat in the Bag. He even cast Barbara Ulrich, who starred as seductive and restless young Montrealer in The Cat in the Bag, as the elderly wealthy woman confronting the young radical Hélène in Death Does Not Exist, achieving a circularity that's both eerie and poignant. For Dufour-Laperrière, invoking Canada's past is a way of reminding that radical violent action isn't a foreign concept. "Violence is happening everywhere in a lot of countries," he says, "and we're surprised in the Western world when it emerges." "I wanted to reflect on these issues, this radicality, but in modern days with a different crisis — social but ecological too — and mix it with a fantastic side that in my eyes illustrates the interior life of the characters." Image | DEATH DOES NOT EXIST Publicity Materials/9_LMNP_Enfant_fleurs.png Caption: A still from Death Does Not Exist (Félix Dufour-Laperrière) Open Image in New Tab At this point, I ask Dufour-Laperrière to consider the whole Cannes apparatus and its contradictions. The festival is hosting films that are touching on some of the most urgent crises of our time. They opened with "Ukraine Day," premiering three titles (Zelensky, Notre Guerre and 2000 Meters to Andriivka) about the war that has been raging for three years. They're also premiering Once Upon a Time in Gaza, a dark comedy about two brothers selling drugs out of a falafel shop in 2007; Yes, Israeli director Nadav Lapid's critical satire about a musician trying to compose a new national anthem after October 7; and Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, a documentary about the lives lost to Israeli offensives in Gaza. The last one arrives in Cannes mired by a tragedy not originally contained in the film. Its main subject, 25-year-old photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, was killed along with 10 members of her family in an Israeli airstrike, just days after announcing her film will premiere at Cannes. While the festivals host these films, it also warns attendees attending to not make any political statements or wear such symbols on the red carpets and events. The stark opposition between Cannes trying to reflect and engage with the world at large in its programming while maintaining a comfortable, cozy and risk-averse decorum is at the heart of what Death Does Not Exist is about. "It's paradoxical being in a peaceful country," says Dufour-Laperrière. "I don't bear direct involvement in it. But there are some people that are directly touched — them and their families — with what's going on in the world. And I guess they should be necessarily allowed to express their concerns. And these concerns are often, as you say, quite tragic. "It's an impossible balance to find between the two. You can be moderate. But if the world isn't moderate, what are we going to do? Reality is unbearable for a lot of people."
CBC
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
A dystopian animated short featuring Jay Baruchel leads Canadian films at Cannes
Anxiety is the theme at this year's Cannes Film Festival. No, I'm not referring to the Doechii song (though I'm sure that'll be playing at all the afterparties); or the chatter around Trump's proposed 100 per cent tariff on international films; or programming like Ari Aster's Eddington, which taps into post pandemic divisiveness, and the final Mission: Impossible, where Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt wages war on an insidious AI. I'm talking about the Canadian films at Cannes this year, arriving on the Cote D'Azur like a dark cloud. There's Anne Émond's Peak Everything, about a man feeling emotionally crippled by the climate crisis. Its French title is Amour Apocalypse. Félix Dufour-Laperrière's animated feature Death Does Not Exist follows the tumultuous inner-life of a radical activist wrestling with existential decisions they must make to save society from where it's headed. In Martine Frossard's animated short Hypersensitive, a woman's fraught search for emotional healing sends her down a surreal rabbit hole that brings her closer to nature. And Bread Will Walk, Alex Boya's eerie and macabre animated short about two kids on a nightmarish journey, imagines the most fantastical take on what the world would be if we stay comfortable and complacent. The latter features Jay Baruchel, Canada's king of anxiety-riddled comedy, lending his vocals to the two children trying to hide from a world struck by a zombie-like plague caused by biochemically engineered food. People are mutating into bread. They're rounded up into concentration camps and fighting starvation by eating each other. It's a Hansel and Gretel meets Grapes of Wrath kind of story that taps into the same worry over industrial farming, mass production and commodification of our most bare necessities that Baruchel has grappled with in his apocalyptic documentary series We're All Gonna Die (Even Jay Baruchel). "It dovetails with my cynical worldview perfectly," Baruchel says, of his collaboration with Boya. Both are on a Zoom call with CBC Arts to discuss representing Canada at Cannes with a film that Baruchel describes as "Brothers Grimm with a healthy dose of 21st century nihilism." We're a couple weeks out from the festival. Baruchel is calling in from his Toronto home, sporting a Montreal Canadians hoodie and cap, and bringing his boisterous and huggable energy to the conversation. Boya, is at his National Film Board (NFB) desk in Montreal, surrounded by film props and gadgets. Boya hoists up to his camera a creepy animatronic of the main character in Bread Will Walk and a massive, mutated melange of actual bread, which he experimented with when he considered making his film using stop-motion animation. "That's disgusting," Baruchel says. One of the reasons Boya abandoned the stop motion approach is because his attempts at filming an animatronic character turning into bread, by using a translucent oven and actual yeast, risked burning down the NFB. "There's all kinds of biohazardous iterations of the project," says Boya, with a mischievous grin. Boya is an experimenter. He tinkers with all the ways he can push technology for his art. As we're talking, he's got a prototype robotics arm strapped to his wrist, which he's using to study "muscle memory alongside temporality" for a project where robotics meets cognitive science and animation/art. He regularly drops head-spinning concepts into our conversation, which would be intimidating if he weren't so gentle and genuine about it all. "He is whatever the exact opposite of full of shit is," is Baruchel's take on Boya. Bread Will Walk is actually drawn from his graphic novel about a walking bread pandemic, The Mill, which Boya originally published — right before the pandemic had everyone stuck at home baking bread — in NFT form. He says he was exploring "database storytelling" and atomizing his story into a world-building project. When approaching Bread Will Walk, Boya even tried on the latest AI tools, to see if they could push the animation further. "I had an open mind with regards to a lot of these new technologies," he says. "But to do exactly what we were doing, it looked better when a human being does it. "You realize that the authorship of a human being speaking to another one, a lot of that happens in the invisible space between the frames," Boya continues, explaining the relationship to the screen and its audience. "That is really a communication between two people. Can I have two robots talk over a coffee? What's the point, right? You can have a coffee shop with two language models talking to each other and the coffee is going to get cold. There's something existentially innate about speaking as humans that is embedded in storytelling and embedded in filmmaking and animation." Keeping humanity at the centre also happens to be Bread Will Walking 's whole aesthetic. The film's evocative hand drawn animation, all bleeding earthy colours and sinewy lines, moves like one continuous shot, where it appears less like the characters are roaming through the world, and more like the environment is mutating around them. They remain the constant in a dehumanizing landscape. The other constant is Baruchel, who voices not only the two kids but all the other hostile characters who enter their orbit. It's a task that Baruchel admits stretched his vocal talents, even though he's really seasoned at this kind of gig. Long before Baruchal spent a decade behind the mic as Hiccup in the How To Train Your Dragon franchise, he was a voice actor in animation and French to English dubs. In fact, one of his earliest gigs was another NFB animated short called One Divided by Two: Kids and Divorce, a film about how triggering divorce can be, which itself was pretty triggering for Baruchel. "I was a 12-year-old kid whose parents' marriage was imploding before my eyes," he says. "[It] was more of a bummer than even this one." The stretch for Baruchel this time around was the singing during a crucial moment in Bread Will Walk, which he describes as both a scary and humbling proposition. "They were cool enough to say if you don't want to sing you don't have to," he says. "But of course, I am a narcissist and a whore, so I was like, 'of course.' … Everybody there was wonderful but good lord, did I ever feel like a guy stuck on a mountain." For Boya, Baruchel's struggle on that mountain, his anxiety during the process, becomes part of the text, and the humanity between the frames. It also reinforces his reasoning for having one actor voice everyone, as if the whole film was an expression of a singular inner monologue. "You're kind of in this limbic state," says Boya. "The character is almost talking to themselves and having all these characters within themselves." Boya then addresses Baruchel about his performance directly: "The tension of having you defy yourself, define yourself and then fight with yourself in this procedural, adversarial learning of carbon-based matter is quite special to see. And quite special to see documented."
