Aurel prepares animated western ‘Desert’
Filmmaker and cartoonist Aurel will follow up his César winner “Josep” with “Desert”, an animated western set in the French Cevennes Mountains.
Set between a more traditional oater and an Indiana Jones style adventure, it is set in the late 1919se Century, “Desert” follows a Mexican-born marksman who explores south-central France on a mysterious mission. Our caballero rediscovers his family’s ancestral land centuries after the religious wars forced these relatives to flee, and soon intervenes 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 each other,” says the filmmaker.
The project will reunite much of the same creative team behind 2020’s award-winning ‘Josep’, including 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 are a family,” says Aurel.
Much of that family was also present at this year’s Cartoon Forum in Toulouse, where Aurel and producers from Les Films d’Ici presented their short series ‘Animals in a Nutshell’.
Adapted from science journalist Nathaniel Herzberg’s zoological columns in the newspaper Le Monde – where Aurel worked as an editorial cartoonist for two decades before stepping down earlier this year – the educational series explores the natural world in a playful and irreverent tone.
Brought to life with spirited narration by singer and actor Camélia Jordana (“Irresistible”), each four-minute episode plays like a strange slideshow, jumping from illustration to education to pure jokes.
“Nathaniel’s voice is very lively, very powerful,” says Aurel. “He can convey deep scientific and zoological research in a very funny and accessible way, and we want to translate that style. Both Nathaniel and I work on serious topics without taking ourselves too seriously.”
