Almost a century after the publication of America, posthumous and unfinished novel by Franz Kafkaanimated cinema resumes its legacy with a project of the same name that gives strength to that story from the perspective of #MeToo and the difficulties of finding oneself when getting older.
Amerykadirected by Polish filmmaker Pyotr Dumala, is still in the development phase, but its premises are clear: delve into the process of victimization and how young people end up finding their own voice “in this strange world”, explains to EFE his co-producer, A.gnieszka Kowalewska-Skowron.
The work of Kafka (1883-1924), which came to light three years after the death of the Czech writer, its starting point is the trip to the United States undertaken by the adolescent Karl Rossmann after being seduced by the maid of his house, many years older, and having impregnated her.
His parents take him away to avoid scandal and he is forced to start a new life in search of fortune.
“All of his choices in America are rooted in that traumatic event. But Karl is not the only victim. Her friend Teresa, abused by her boss, tries to justify her aggressor. It’s two people trying to do something together in this crazy world. It was clear to us that the victimization of the victims was the way forward”maintains the co-producer.
His film is inspired by the novel and uses animation as the most obvious method to transfer the Kafkaesque universe and the America that the author imagined to the big screen: “It was never there, so the world it shows is what I had in my head and that’s something you can do in animation with more surreal and blurry images.”
Partner search
Ameryka It will be Dumala’s first animated feature film and he is looking for co-producers, sales agents and distributors at Cartoon Movie, the main co-production platform for the European animation film industry, which celebrates its 24th edition from Tuesday to Thursday in Bordeaux.
“We know that it will be very difficult to make an artistic film with few illustrators, so we need studios that have a similar style and mentality to this type of project”, tells the co-producer about this film with a budget of three million euros (about 3.2 million dollars).
Dumala (Warsaw, 1956) debuted in feature length, but his interest in the Czech writer is not new: among his previous short films are Franz Kafka (1992) and Zbrodnia i kara (Crime and Punishment2000).
The chosen technique, by hand, in 2D and in black and white, reinforces the dreamlike nature of the novel and takes the game of contrasts to the extreme by transforming the two main villains into the cat and the fox from Collodi’s “Pinocchio”, who in that second work they took advantage of the innocence of the wooden doll.
The audience this drama aspires to is an adult and there is a lot of time left before it finally sees the light: in 2024 Kowalewska-Skowron hopes to start production and in 2027 she hopes to have finished it. “It’s a long way”he admits.
Ameryka is one of the 57 projects selected in this edition of the Cartoon Movie, two more than in 2021. Of these, 19 are still in concept, 23 in development, 8 in production and 7 finished, of which a preview will be shown.
France is once again the most represented country, with fifteen, followed by Spain (eight), Belgium and Norway, with five each. Since the first edition in 1999, this forum has allowed 426 films to find financing with a global budget of 2,800 million euros (about 3,000 million dollars). (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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