Double Vision

Acclaimed Paris-based company Autour de Minuit brings two innovative animated features to Cartoon Movie this year.

Nicolas Schmerkin, the founder of Paris-based company Autour de Minuit, is having a busy year. Not only is he getting ready for award season with two acclaimed shorts (Alberto Vázquez’s Homeless Home, which is nominated for a Goya prize, and Geoffroy de Crécy’s Annecy Cristal-nominated Empty Places), he is also presenting two movies in development at Bordeaux’s annual Cartoon Movie event.

Oh, and he’s producing Vázquez’s much-anticipated feature Unicorn Wars, which chronicles the age-old war between militarized bears and the dangerous unicorns that threaten them! Schmerkin, who won the 2010 Oscar for Best Animated Short for Logorama and has produced numerous well-known shorts such as Decorado, Metamorphosis and I Want Pluto to Be a Planet Again, was kind enough to give us the scoop on Shadows and The Midnight King, two innovative and highly original features he’s pitching at Cartoon Movie in March.

Shadows is adapted from a brilliant comic book written by Belgian author Vincent Zabus and illustrated by French talent Hippolyte. “The comic is itself an adaptation of a theater play created years previously by Vincent Zabus together with African migrants, based on their own stories of exile,” says Schmerkin. “It seems that every time this narrative is adapted into another medium (from true stories onto a theater stage, turned to a graphic novel, then to a flm), it gains further depth and universality.”

The producer discovered the book in a comic-book store in Clermont-Ferrand during the city’s short flm festival three years ago. He recalls, “I was immediately in awe of both the storytelling and the colorful illustrations. I showed the book to Nadia Micault, a talented director and accomplished artist we’d been working with on several shorts and music videos. I was sure that she would love to join this kind of project, and she did. We started the development very recently, mid 2020, when our Belgium co-producers Vincent Tavier and Hugo Deghilage from Panique! started to raise funds and fnd subsidies for the writing phase.”

According to Schmerkin, everything moved quickly from that point on. “We started the pilot for the Cartoon Movie in October when we got some development money from Europe (Media) and France, and here we are now, with a pilot and a script, ready to start pre-production as soon as we get the fnancing,” he explains.

A Potent Mix of Magic and Realism

The producer says he loved the original comic book’s colorful drawings and was struck by the power of the story and how it tackled social issues such as exile, migration and family uprooting and mixing in a dark fairy tale with humor, surrealism and songs. “Shadows is about a 14-year-old boy and his nine-year-old sister who have to leave their home village and embark on an adventure as they look for their father and better prospects,” notes Schmerkin. “Based on true stories, and without sugarcoating or bowdlerizing heartbreaking realities, the immense power of this work is the way it tells

Living Like a Refugee: Based on a popular graphic novel by Vincent Zabus and Hippolyte, Shadows centers on a brother and sister who are forced to leave their homeland after it’s ravaged by oppressive forces.

a universal story. Animation will bring a touch of softness and a more poetic dimension to the story. The visual universe brings enormous potential to the storytelling for different age groups: While children can connect to the siblings’ relationship and quest, adults will understand the social and political issues.” Visually, the flm will combine some CG elements with a 2D look. “The director works a lot with paper and watercolor and does wonderful backgrounds with a lot of detail and hatching, similar to an engraving style,” says Schmerkin. “Her input will defnitely be determining the style of the flm, close to her illustrations. Perhaps the closest references would be Miyazaki’s works. At the development stage we are mainly working with both our studio ADV in Paris and our studio Schmuby/Borderline in Angouleme, where we have gathered a great team of experienced talents in feature animations. Most of them have worked on acclaimed feature flms such as The Red Turtle and The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily.” The budget for Shadows is estimated to be around 6 million euros ($7.3 million). Autour de Minuit is co-developing the flm with its Belgian partners and long-time friends Panique!, the studio behind movies such as A Town Called Panic and Ernest & Celestine. The producer believes that a third country will probably be necessary to fnance the production. “We are already very lucky and honored to have great interest from sales agent Grégoire Melin and his team from Kinology.