To discover this Wednesday at the cinema, “The Lion and the 3 bandits” by Rasmus A. Sivertsen, is a nice animated film adapted from the work of Thorbjørn Egner, to see from 3 years old.
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Once upon a time : Welcome to Cardamom, the most peaceful city in the world! The baker prepares her rolls, the shoemaker repairs the shoes and the weather forecast always announces good weather: nothing could cause trouble among the inhabitants. Nothing, you say? That’s without counting three funny scoundrels by the name of Casper, Jasper and Jonathan, who have taken it into their heads to venture into town… and beware, they have a lion!
What they will love: After The Great Cheese Race and A Trip to the Moon, director Rasmus A. Sivertsen is back with the animated film The Lion and the Three Bandits. This moral tale is adapted from Norwegian children’s author Thorbjørn Egner, “The Dwellers and Thieves of Cardamom“. The plays and songs he wrote are an integral part of Norwegian childhood.
For this work, Thorbjørn Egner was inspired by a trip to Morocco in the 1940s. The illustrator would have imagined the city of Cardamom from sketches drawn by the family in the Moroccan fortified city of Essaouira.
This uniquely styled musical is a lovely tale about life in society and how to relate to each other. The inhabitants of Cardamom live in harmony in this city where life is good. The three robbers live on the margins of society and survive by stealing but wish to integrate with the inhabitants. During their adventure, Jasper, Casper and Jonathan will learn to integrate and will discover themselves.
QVISTEN ANIMATION AS
The director explains that he has developed a brand new technique for his feature film. Planned in stop-motion, The lion and the three robbers is finally an innovative combination of sets in volume and CGI characters. This is the first feature film to use this technique.
Rasmus A. Sivertsen states in the film’s press kit: “We originally planned to shoot a stop-motion film, but the pandemic made filming impossible. So we spent a year filming all the backgrounds for the film with a reduced crew, in full confinement, then we created digital characters and integrated and animated them into the sets. All combined, after a particularly careful post-production, the illusion of stop motion is almost complete!
It was a very difficult process to design, test and validate, but it paid off in the end. This made it possible to expand the range of emotions and facial expressions, which could not have been achieved in traditional stop-motion.“
QVISTEN ANIMATION AS
Indeed the characters and especially the animals (the lion, the dog, the camel and the parrot) of the feature film are very expressive, the technique invented is a real plus to animate the characters and make the eyes tender and luminous.
What may worry them: No scary scenes, except perhaps the fire scene which may worry the little ones. But the style of the film makes the animation smoother and the children will quickly be relieved thanks to the heroic intervention of the 3 bandits.
What they will keep inside them: Like the original work, the film makes people think about life in society and encourages viewers to question their perception of others. Should the sheriff be so benevolent? Is Aunt Sofie right to be so rigid and suspicious? Can we force others to change? Should we include those who do not respect social rules?
So many questions that allow young spectators to understand that we should not force others to become what they are not or to do what they do not want.