Animated film A Winter’s Journey, directed by Alex Helfrecht, has been picked up by Sony Pictures Classics.
A Winter’s Journey is an animated film comprised of a mixture of CGI, live action, and painted animation. The movie, directed by Alex Helfrecht, has been picked up by Sony Pictures Classics, which will handle distribution in North and Latin America. It will also cover international territories including Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, India, and South Africa, Deadline reports.
Set in 1812 in Bavaria, the film tells the tale of a lovelorn poet who undertakes a treacherous journey across mountains, ice, and snow. His trek will either bring death or new life. A Winter’s Journey is interestingly based on a piece of classical music – Franz Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’. It is the most-performed classical song cycle in the world.
Even more intriguing is the fact that the film has been made using a video game-building software from Playstation, called ‘Dreams’. It is the first animated movie to have ever done this. The studio that developed ‘Dreams’, Media Molecule, has won multiple BAFTA Awards.
While the film sounds like a wonderful oddity compared to the majority of animated films, A Winter’s Journey has a couple of big names in its voice cast. Most notably, the talents of John Malkovich and Jason Isaacs (hello!) will be featured. Also among the cast are Son Of Saul’s Martin Czarnik, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (who appeared in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald) and Martina Gedeck.
The film is somewhat of a European co-production, with production companies based all over the continent working on it. London-based Oiffy joins forces with BreakThru Films in Poland, Pandora Film in Germany, and Belgium-based Wrong Men North. Meanwhile, other producers Alexis Perrin and Raphaël Berdugo are from France. Not only does the film sound interesting, but it’s also an incredible cooperative effort for the various people involved.
A Winter’s Journey is set to begin filming in June in Wroclaw, Poland. The painted aspects of the animation are being worked on by the artists behind the award-winning Loving Vincent, about the life and death of visionary artist Vincent van Gogh.
More news as we hear it.
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