19/10/2022 - We met with the directors of the (very young) children’s animated film, which marks their first foray into feature films and is hitting cinemas in Belgium and France

We met with Arnaud Demuynck and Rémi Durin, the directors behind the animated film for very young audiences Yuku and the Flower of the Himalayas [+see also:
film review
interview: Rémi Durin and Arnaud Demuy…
film profile], which marks their transition to feature films after a lengthy and impressive history with shorts. The movie is released in Belgium and France on 19 October, courtesy of Le Parc Distribution and Gebeka Films, respectively.

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Cineuropa: How long have you been working together?
Arnaud Demuynck: I came across Rémi through his work when he was studying at La Cambre. I contacted him when he left school to enquire about working together. We’ve been working together for 15 years now.

Rémi Durin: You got me working on A Cat in Paris [+see also:
trailer
film profile], which you were co-producing, and it was a real wake up call for me. Working in a studio is a far cry from working in school, but that might be why we were able to make a feature film afterwards. We knew what it was to share the load with a team, to get organised, to give things structure.

What were the major challenges, obstacles or stumbling blocks when you made the leap to feature film?
RD: I think we often tend to assume that a feature film is just a longer short film, but in reality the time you spend working doesn’t increase in the same way, it increases exponentially. With short films, you sometimes do everything all on your own, but with feature films you have to be ok with sharing the load, in order to take on the workload in the first place, but also to encourage and welcome the good ideas that other people bring. And opening up to others isn’t always easy for authors.

AD: It’s fairly similar with production. I’m used to co-productions, but not to this extent. With this film, we had to spend 20% in Switzerland, 30% in France and 50% in Belgium. They’re considerable amounts; you have to identify the right artistic and financial collaborations. I carried on working with people I knew really well but, for the first time, I joined forces with other organisations - Artemis in Belgium, Vivement lundi in France - because, as a director, I’d finalised the development strategy, but I needed support for its implementation afterwards. It was a lifesaver.

What kind of dynamic do the two of you have?
AD: I’m an author-screenwriter, but I’m also a producer. When I seek out Rémi, I’m seeking out a director. I don’t draw, I don’t have a graphic universe of my own. I need him for images; I’m more on the sound side of things.

RD: We also worked with Artistic Director Paul Jadoul. In a certain respect, the three of us devised this film together. When we read the screenplay with Paul, he thought about graphic options, the moods of the different sequences, the colours, the stylisation. And then I thought about how to tell the story. It’s a bit of a ping pong game, between us.

AD: As a screenwriter, I hit a wall at a certain point, I start to go round in circles, and the mise-en-scène reveals what needs to be done to make the film even better; it identifies holes or imbalances in the movie’s narration. Rémi and Paul’s ideas made me rethink how to tackle the story, and get back to work on the screenplay. What’s exceptional in our trio is that Paul, who’s an artistic director, is also a technical director. Ultimately, there are only a few of us making the big decisions, which saves time and energy. And a shorter film is also a cheaper film. We’re talking about 3 million for one hour, rather than 4.5 million for one and a half hours. I wanted the beating heart of the film to be shot in Brussels’ Enclume studios. And for that to happen, we had to find the budget in Belgium.

RD: It’s true that projects of Belgian initiative are often nabbed by France for funding reasons. We needed to be creative when it came to finance in order to bring our dream to life: to make an animated feature film for young Belgian audiences.

(Translated from French)