14/10/2005

On his way through Paris and after finding himself in the midst of a crowd of children, attending the preview of the feature animation film Laura's Star (Laura's Star) that opens on Wednesday, October 19th, in French theatres, distributed by Gebeka Films, the Belgian filmmaker Piet De Rycker recapitulates for Cineuropa on the successes achieved by his association with the German producer/director Thilo Graf Rothkirch. From The Little Polar Bear (2001, 2.7 million tickets sold in Germany) to a following which has been strongly established in the German and Austrian box-office Top 5 after its release last September 29th (which will be released in France by Gebeka Films February 8th 2006), going through Laura's Star’s poetic magic (named best young film last July in the Lola of German cinema): explaining the secrets to success for European animation.

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How did your successful association with Thilo Graf Rothkirch come about?
We meet ten years ago, at the time when he just had ventured in feature film making. I came from working in Ireland for John Bluth’s studio and I was a bit tired of the way that Americans made animation films. Thilo Graf Rothkirch proposed to make something more European, more personal. I immediately knew that we had to work together because he did not want a hero, he wanted characters that already had a story, people that were a bit in the pit or had lost some dreams, but that still kept trying to live their lives in the surrounding world and needed their friends to fully succeed.

What artistic choices guided L’Etoile de Laura’s production?
Thilo Graf Rothkirch showed me the book and asked me if there were enough material for a feature film. I calculated that we had a potential animation film if we could develop the story on a different line, near a Japanese poetic spirit, similar to Miyazaki’s. The strongest idea in the book is that Laura not only finds a star on earth, but also this star is already shattered and she cares for everything as if the little girl herself found herself in a setting that she hadn’t chosen. Both characters are more or less in the same situation, which helps the development of their friendship. But they must quickly return to their own realities and achieve their fates. The film’s message is that it is important to have a star during hardship, it can help us survive daily life. But, we must also be able to part from it so that we can open ourselves to others. In regards to the city, which is too a character in itself, we based ourselves on Brussels, Hamburg, Berlin and a bit of Paris, with all the roofs. We have tried to create a European city, very different from the American ones, we wanted a non aggressive, beautiful and reassuring urban universe.

What do you think about the "2D or 3D" debate?
Many professionals consider 2D animation to be obsolete. I believe that we are leaving this territory too early. There is a whole world of between 2D and 3D still to be explored. You can create a very modern film without the use of 3D, which I find to be too uniform, visually speaking. Between the two technical realms you can find a language that allows for a more personal visualisation and that is artist dictated rather than computer dictated. With digital composites and 35mm you can create very complex shots. Before, you could manage 5 levels with the multi-shot 35mm, while presently you can create infinite levels. In Laura's Star, there is a scene that lasts about 20 seconds, where Laura flies over a river near the opera house. It took 8 months to make it because there were many levels to manage, in order to make it look as real as possible, each level had its own speed. However, it is possible to give 3D sensations using 2D. It took around 3 years to make Laura's Star: a year to write the screenplay, 8 months of pre-production and storyboard, and a year and two months for the production. It was all done with an 8 to 9 million euro budget, which is not too much considering the results. The Americans have told us that it would be impossible to create something like it in the US for that price, it would cost at least twice as much.

Can European animation keep up with American animation?
We must find our target audience to stand the best of chances. European animation films have to be more personal. If we try to do what Americans do best, we loose a bit of our identity, of our language, and we loose credibility in front of the spectator. Arthouse films such as Kirikou in France or the A–Films in Scandinavia (Terkel in trouble), were made by European teams for European audiences: that’s the way to go! This is what we are looking at with The Little Polar Bear or Laura's Star, you have to find your own way to tell stories, without following the American styles, full of American points of view, bad guys against good guys and good guys win at the end. Miyazaki’s films have had a lot of success lately, but when you look back at his past, you can see the great effort made to find a way to tell stories differently. It’s the winning formula in the long run.