The Illusionist

Colour, 35 mm
United Kingdom, France, 2010, 85 min
Section: Horizons

Synopsis

It’s the late 1950s and no-one pays attention anymore to an aging stage entertainer doing the same old magic tricks, when all they want now is loud rock music. One day our hero swaps his humiliating existence as a fringe magician for a distant journey at whose end – in remote Scotland – he finds a loyal fan who will change his life forever. She is convinced that this stranger is able to perform real magic.... This nostalgic, old-worldly animated film by Sylvain Chomet is based on an unrealised script written in 1956 by French actor and director Jacques Tati as a letter to his estranged illegitimate daughter, Helga Marie-Jeanne Schiel. Accordingly, in Chomet’s view, this isn’t a film about a love story, but more about the relationship between father and daughter. The animated hero is a tribute to Monsieur Hulot, the character Tati created in screen comedies such as My Uncle (1958) and Playtime (1967).

About the director

Sylvain Chomet (b. 1963, Maisons-Laffitte, France) graduated from the newly founded comic art studio at the School of Fine Arts in Angoulême (1987). He acquired his first professional experience with animated film as an assistant in Richard Purdum’s London studio and, at the end of the 1980s, he was involved in advertising (e.g. Renault, Swissair). After returning to France he established a graphic studio in Montpellier, but then moved to Québec in 1993, where he made the animated short The Old Lady and the Pigeons (La vieille dame et les pigeons, 1997 – BAFTA Award, Grand Prix at the Annecy IFF). In 2002 he made his first feature film The Triplets of Belleville (Les triplettes de Belleville), which was followed by the feature segment "Tour Eiffel” from the collection of film stories Paris, je t’aime (2006) and the feature film The Illusionist.