What you need to know before you see ‘Elementos’, the new animated bet from Disney-Pixar, arriving in Ecuador on June 22

In Ciudad Elementos, the inhabitants of fire, water, earth and air live peacefully and in harmonybut there are some families who prefer to stay true to their traditions and not mingle with their opponents, for what future could fire and water have if they try to come together?

Against all physical logic, that is precisely the framework for the love story that the film presents articlesdirected by Peter Sohn (Ratatouille, Monster University) and which will premiere in Ecuador on Thursday, June 22. The world premiere took place at the end of May, then the film closed the 76th Cannes International Film Festival (France)..

For the director it is a very personal story, because he himself experienced what it means to fall in love with and marry someone his family didn’t approve of in the first place. “I am Korean and my wife is American, half Italian.. At first, I didn’t tell my parents about the relationship because, kind of old-fashioned, they wanted me to marry a Korean girl. What my grandmother told me before she died was literally “Marry a Korean””, he noted.

In Articles, This love and cultural conflict begins when Ember Lumen (voiced by Leah Lewis), whose parents immigrated from Fuegolandia to Element City, meets water boy Wade Ripple (Mamoudou Athie).. “At first, Ember rejects the city, but Wade slowly helps her fall in love with everything the city has to offer. We’ll see ways she gets to know the city and those are very typical of my favorite comedies”.

“We loved the idea of ​​Wade playing two roles for Ember.”, explains Sohn further. “The first is that it represents a safe place for her, because she doesn’t judge, and also a mirror character. In many ways, Wade was created to help Ember see himself. It’s not there to teach or guide her, but it functions as a mirror in which Ember can see a new version of herself.”.

Denise Ream, producer, also highlights the familial and cultural burden that weighs on the plot, always in a comical way. “It is a very emotional comedy, a story about relationships, between fire and water, between parents and children, and between all of us and our neighbors, who may look different from us. It’s part comedy, part family adventure, and part culture clash.”.

And, so that his characters manage to capture the essence of what the future of a foreign nation means, the team brought together hundreds of Pixar immigrants to share their personal experiences. “Most of us, wherever we are, come from somewhere else. There are so many moving stories of what people went through to get here.about their families’ experiences.

The next creative challenge was figure out how to animate and render your characters with each element’s properties. Sohn gave them some very clear instructions: Ember is fire, not on fire, and Wade, of course, is water, not a vessel that holds water.. None of the characters would have a virtual skeleton, but they had to be able to move and, even more difficult, express feelings in a believable and engaging way, allowing the audience to connect with them.

But the characters wouldn’t shine without the right setting: Ciudad Elementos, which was thought from its historical basis for this fiction: The first community to arrive was the water community, which is the basic infrastructure of the city. The next group was land, so the city is built on a delta where the water meets the land. Then came the air and then the fire.

“The above has two points of view: Element City presents an obstacle for Ember as its water infrastructure makes it difficult for a fire element, but also reveals a beauty it did not know and an opportunity.”