Award-Winning Animator Aurel Readies Culture-Clash Western ‘Desert,’ Offbeat Science Series ‘Animals in a Nutshell’ (EXCLUSIVE)
variety.comBen Croll Filmmaker and editorial cartoonist Aurel will follow up his César-winner “Josep” with “Desert,” an animated Western set in France’s Cevennes mountain range.
Pitched between a more traditional oater and an “Indiana Jones” style adventure and set in the late 19th century, “Desert” will follow a Mexico-born gunslinger exploring south-central France with a mysterious mission.
Rediscovering his family’s ancestral land centuries after the religious wars forced those kinsmen to flee, our caballero soon steps in to protect a local clan from an oppressive landowner and his abusive henchmen. “We want to bring together two universes that should have nothing to do with one another,” says the filmmaker.
The project will reunite much of the same creative team behind 2020’s award-winning “Josep,” among them screenwriter Jean-Louis Milesi and producer Serge Lalou of Les Films d’Ici Méditerranée, as well as animation studios Les Fées Spéciales in Montpellier and Tchack in Lille. “We’re a family,” says Aurel.
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