EXCLUSIVE: Animation-focused sales company Gebeka International has unveiled new images for Little Amelie, adapted from Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb’s bestseller The Character of Rain ahead of an EFM push.
Tackling themes of self-awareness and child development, the work revolves around a child born in Japan to a Belgium family. It takes inspiration from the Japanese belief that until the age of three years old, all children are Gods, and then on their third birthday they fall from grace and join the rest of humanity.
Liane-Cho Han and Mailys Vallade’s Little Amelie is the first adaptation of Nothomb’s fictionalized autobiography tapping in her childhood in Japan.
For an intense 3 years, the young protagonist discovers language, her parents, brother and sister, a heavenly garden, passions (Japan and water), aversions (to carp), seasons and time, as she passes a period that will shape her life forever, in happiness and tragedy.
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The work is Han’s feature directorial debut after taking storyboard artist credits on Calamity, A Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary and Long Way North, as well as for Mailys Vallade, whose storyboard artist credits include the Oscar-nominated I Lost My Body, alongside Calamity.
The animated feature is produced by Maybe Movies (Ernest & Celestine, Long Way North, Zombillenium and Calamity) and Ikki Film.
Gebeka International will unveil fresh extracts for the film, which is currently in the final stages of post-production and expected to be ready for a festival push this year. French distributor Haut et Court is planning a release in the second quarter of this year.
The company’s slate also features Ugo Bienvenu’s upcoming animated feature Arco about a boy who uses rainbows to travel through time but then gets stuck in the wrong era. It will unveil a first teaser for the film produced by Félix de Grivy, Natalie Portman (also part of the English-language voice cast) and Sophie Mas.
Other EFM highlights include a first trailer for upcoming 4K remastered version of Japanese Mamoru Oshii’s 1985 animated feature Angel’s Egg. Only released in Japanese theaters 40 years ago, this now cult animation is set to be seen internationally at festivals and theaters for the first time.
Gebeka International was created in 2021 out of partnership between Goodfellas and leading French animation distributor Gebeka Films, a Hildegarde company.
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