In Toulouse, Florence Miailhe told about the long “Crossing” to make her cartoon
Florence Miailhe came to present at the ABC, in Toulouse, her animated feature film “La traversée” which will be released on September 29th. A great success which evokes the phenomenon of migrations.
The beautiful film directed by Florence Miailhe and written with Marie Desplechin touches the universal. Meeting with the director of a unique work of art …
Obviously, to shoot an animated film you have to be endowed with great patience …
Yes it’s a long-term job and at all stages! (laughs) As well to obtain and wait for funding for 10 years as for the realization which required a Benedictine work since we prepared the film for 3 years…
Why has the subject not always been composed by television channels and other funders?
This very universal side of the story, the flight of two children lost on the roads of exile, has not always been very well understood. Sometimes I was turned around: “Short films are great, they are fireworks, but what will happen to a feature film?” And there was also the fact that at the time, in 2006, the subject of migration was not as present as it is today. When we presented the film, the funders thought of a story about the war of 39-45 when it was not our intention. If it had been necessary to find references it was even more 1905 than 1940. And then there was the death of little Aylan on the beach of Bodrum in Turkey in 2015 and at that time, indeed, this relationship between these old migrations and those of the early twentieth and twenty-first centuries were made much more easily.
Have you left the hand to the animators in view of the scale of the project?
Precisely that was the difficulty, I had to both leave enough freedom on the details and at the same time keep the coherence of the whole because I did not want it to be just the execution. Each shot was prepared, but not too much, so that the facilitators could make a little something their own. The peculiarity of this form of work is that each animator will take charge of a shot that is part of the story, but a complete shot to the practices of the animation film industry where the work is divided into canapes. , some do the first sketches of the movements, others who do the intervals, others who are going to color now, it’s done a lot on the computer, etc.
How intimate did you instill in the film?
Family history bribes. At the beginning, I wanted to do something more historical perhaps on this great migration of the beginning of the 20th century, but very quickly on a drop that for something more universal. But we continued to draw on family anecdotes, in the relations between the brother and the sister which rather come from the inspiration of Marie Desplechin.
“La traversée”, released Wednesday September 29th.
Animated painting
In 2002, the César for best short film was awarded to Florence Miailhe’s film “Au Premier dimanche d’août”. A tribute to her parents and to the village of Cabrespine in the Aude where she had just spent her vacation, the work was already seductive by the process used: “My animated painting technique is a bit like a balancing act without a net. I paint directly on glass plates under the camera with all that implies of risks, intuitions, chances and demands. “