France's Ugo Bienvenu ready to take animated 'Arco' to Oscars

"Awards are both blessings and curses. (...) They create pressure for the future," the 38-year-old Bienvenu told AFP in an interview in Los Angeles, as he campaigns for his film, a dreamy vision of a peaceful future.

"My craft is to make things, and to make things, you have to be light, at ease enough to imagine."

This sincerity of purpose has allowed the comic book illustrator to produce his first feature film. Instead of accepting one of Hollywood's offers to adapt one of his graphic novels for the big screen, Bienvenu says he preferred to create "something new."

"Arco" -- which won the top prize at the prestigious Annecy animation festival -- tells a tale of a beautiful friendship between two children, against the backdrop of two radically different futures for humanity, which is mistreating the planet.

- 'Don't lie to children' –

The titular hero is a boy from a distant future in which humans live in harmony with nature on platforms perched in the clouds so that the Earth can renew itself.

Dressed in a rainbow cape stolen from his family, Arco wants to go back in time to see the dinosaurs. But he loses control of his journey and lands in 2075.

In this not-so-distant future, he meets Iris, a little girl about his age who is forced to contend with endless natural disasters and parents who interact with her via hologram, often delegating her care to a robot babysitter.

Despite an immense fire on the horizon, Iris wants to do everything possible to help Arco get home. This heartfelt impulse will also teach her how to save humanity.

Bienvenu said that he hopes his ecologically minded fable will remind everyone of one thing: "Don't lie to children."

"We live in a world that every summer experiences heat waves, fires and...this will accelerate," he told AFP.

He wants to tell them: "This is the world that you are living in, this is the time you are living in, but that doesn't mean it's hopeless."

The utopian tale, made entirely in 2D and featuring a dreamy score, has earned flattering comparisons to the cinematic work of Japanese master animator Hayao Miyazaki.

But Bienvenu -- who also creates short videos and is directing an "Ant-Man" mini-series for Marvel Studios -- had to struggle to get "Arco" made. Producers didn't love the script, mainly because there was no obvious villain. 

"We got a lot of criticism for that during the financing stage, even though there is a huge antagonist -- the system in which we live," he said.

- 'Create light' -

He had to take risks, pouring all of his personal savings into making an "animatic" -- an animated storyboard in black and white -- to show investors.

This rough draft of the film convinced Mountain A, the production company run by Portman and her partner Sophie Mas. 

In October, the US actress told AFP that she backed "Arco" because she wanted to "make films that create a better world for our children."

Bienvenu, who usually adopts a darker palette for his work, admitted that becoming a father pushed him to abandon the cynicism of his past projects, which now feels like "posturing."

"I wanted to give the world a hug, I wanted to make a gentle film" and "create light rather than darkness," said the father of two young children. 

Bienvenu hopes that the success of "Arco," which was made in Paris for only nine million euros ($10.5 million), will stimulate France's animation industry.

"In France, we tend to limit ourselves from the script-writing stage because we say to ourselves, 'We'll never get the money to do that'," he said.

"What reassures me is to tell myself that if we do things in a sincere way, people are moved."

The Oscar nominations will be revealed on January 22, ahead of the March 15 gala.

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