Filmmaker and editorial cartoonist Aurel will follow up his César-winner “Josep” with “Desert,” an animated Western set in France’s Cevennes mountain range.
Pitched between a more traditional oater and an “Indiana Jones” style adventure and set in the late 19th century, “Desert” will follow a Mexico-born gunslinger exploring south-central France with a mysterious mission. Rediscovering his family’s ancestral land centuries after the religious wars forced those kinsmen to flee, our caballero soon steps in to protect a local clan from an oppressive landowner and his abusive henchmen.
“We want to bring together two universes that should have nothing to do with one another,” says the filmmaker.
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The project will reunite much of the same creative team behind 2020’s award-winning “Josep,” among them screenwriter Jean-Louis Milesi and producer Serge Lalou of Les Films d’Ici Méditerranée, as well as animation studios Les Fées Spéciales in Montpellier and Tchack in Lille. “We’re a family,” says Aurel.
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Much of that family was also on hand at this year’s Cartoon Forum in Toulouse, where Aurel and producers from Les Films d’Ici presented their short-form series “Animals in a Nutshell.”
Adapted from science journalist Nathaniel Herzberg’s zoology columns in newspaper Le Monde – where Aurel worked as an editorial cartoonist for two decades before stepping down earlier this year – the educational series will explore the natural world with a playful and irreverent tone.
Brought to life with feisty narration by singer and actor Camélia Jordana (“Irresistible”), each four-minute episode plays as an off-kilter slideshow, jumping from illustration to education to pure gags.
“Nathaniel’s voice is very lively, very punchy,” says Aurel. “He can relay dense scientific and zoological research in a very funny and accessible way, and we want to translate that style. Both Nathaniel and I work on serious subjects without taking ourselves too seriously.”
