Aircraft Pictures Helps Animated Pic “Julián” Take Off
It took more than a village to create Julián. Filmmakers from Ireland, Luxembourg, Denmark and Canada lent their talents and expertise to this animated feature about a boy who learns to embrace his inner mermaid. We talked with producer Anthony Leo, chairman of Canadian production company Aircraft Pictures, about his team’s pivotal role in getting this project off the ground.
When managing a co-production like Julián, an animated feature that employed more than 150 artists around the world, experience matters.
Having worked on youth-oriented projects like the feature film Youngblood, hit Netflix series Geek Girl, CBC Gem’s Gangnam Project and the Oscar-nominated animated feature The Breadwinner, producer Anthony Leo and the team at Toronto-based Aircraft Pictures could offer that experience in areas like getting funding and working on distribution.
Based on Jessica Love’s bestselling children’s picture book Julián is a Mermaid, the film tells the story of a young boy who spends a summer learning to express himself, ultimately deciding to dress as a mermaid for Coney Island’s annual Mermaid Parade.
Julián is rendered in gorgeous, hand-drawn 2D animation by an army of artists from studios including Cartoon Saloon (Ireland), Melusine Studio (Luxembourg), Sun Creature (Denmark) and Canada’s own Guru Studio. An interesting note, in January of this year Leo became CEO of Cartoon Saloon while maintaining a role as chairman of Aircraft Pictures.
The film — which received funding through the Canada Media Fund’s Distributor Program (now the Distributor Envelope Program) — has its world premiere this month at the Annecy Animation Festival. Leo was in France, where the festival takes place, when we met by Zoom to chat about making Julián, joining forces with actor Zoe Saldaña, and why he thinks animation can survive AI.
Julián is Aircraft Pictures’ first animated feature since 2017’s The Breadwinner. What brought you back to animation?
Right. About 10 years ago we approached Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon about a project that we had developed called The Breadwinner as a co-production and it went really well, getting a lot of acclaim and awards. In that instance we had optioned the book and adapted it and took it to them.
This time around they had a book that they were adapting and they came to us and said, “Hey, let's see if we can capture lightning in a bottle again, and would you guys be interested in co-producing with us?” We were immediately in because it was a great book, and we love working with those guys.
Can you give us a quick synopsis of the film?
Julián is a young boy who goes to stay with his grandmother for the summer in Brooklyn and he doesn't really know her that well. He discovers that every summer there's a parade called The Mermaid Parade. This is a real event. And he meets these three girls who treat it like it’s the epitome of their summer, planning what they're going to wear. So he decides that he wants to become a mermaid too.
Over the course of the summer he encounters some challenges, but it's really a chance for him to discover what it is to express himself, and in turn helps his Abuela [grandmother] express herself as well.
The film’s directors are Ireland’s Louise Bagnall and Mark Mullery, as well as Guadeloupe-born Guillaume Lorin. Why the need for three directors?
Louise Bagnall, who is the lead director, this is her first feature film and so we wanted to surround her with as much support as possible. She’s an Academy Award-nominated director for her short Late Afternoon, so she didn't need that much help. However, because this is a story about a young boy of Dominican descent, and although Julián is not necessarily LGBTQ, we wanted Guillaume Lorin to be involved because he is from that part of the world and is queer himself. And then Mark Mullery has a lot of experience as an assistant director on some high-end Cartoon Saloon projects, so it was great to have him for the technical side of things.
How did Zoe Saldaña and her production company Cinestar Pictures get involved?
We’d started conversations very early on with them. Zoe and her sisters, Cisely and Mariel, are mostly from the Dominican Republic, heritage-wise, and Zoe Saldaña has also been very supportive of the LGBTQ community, specifically in support of her nephew who is non-binary. As soon as we put it in front of them they automatically took to the material and loved the way we were telling the story and just wanted to do whatever they could to help get the message out there.
Did you have any trepidation about collaborating with them in that they could exert some influence on the project?
We’d worked with Angelina Jolie on The Breadwinner and people at this level of their career, this level of celebrity, they have their choice of projects that they could get involved in. So it must be something that's aligned with what they want to do, and in this case, it ticked all the boxes. It took a long time to get them to focus on the project because they have so many things in their lives that are pulling them in all directions. But once they read it, and saw an early cut of the film, they were into it immediately.
What’s the state of animation now in terms of creating and selling projects?
I think globally we're in a bit of a correction. It’s definitely slowed down after the boom that started with COVID when all this animation was happening. Then on top of that you have the rise of AI-generated content, so it is a challenging time. But I think we're very fortunate to be collaborating with people at the top of their field so there's always going to be a demand for very high-quality animation.
Does the emergence of AI in the animation space keep you up at night?
What I'm encouraged by is what seems to be happening especially with Gen Z. There’s a bit of a backlash against AI-generated content, especially with young people. It feels like it’s a bit of a novelty, but I believe that flooding YouTube and the airwaves with AI-generated content is going to get old very quickly and people are savvy.
Yes, it’s going to become higher in quality the more people invest in it — and it’s not going away — but people are not going to ingest more content for the sake of content. It has to be something special for people to spend their valuable watch time on.
The Breadwinner focused on a young girl in war-torn Afghanistan and with Julián we spend time with a boy who struggles with feelings that he’s different. How important is it for Aircraft Pictures to create meaningful films for children?
Very. It’s interesting with a project like Julián, we have come across some distributors internationally who say, “I love the movie, but I can't show this to my seven-year-old, or I can’t show this to my nine-year-old.” You are going to run into people who feel that way. But I know from my own experience…in some ways I am Julián. There were no movies when I was a kid saying, “Hey, don’t worry that you are a little loud, different, it's okay to go through this.”
We need kids who are like that, who are expressive. We need somewhere for them to go
