Find out why one of the directors behind a Cristal-winning animated film nearly pulled the plug on it, and what a single sentence from a friend finally made him understand about spending 10 years on one story.
The directors start with what the film is really about: memory, time and pain set against the Second World War in Southeast Asia, told so that nobody needs a history lesson to feel it. Raúl describes it as a sweeping love story set against a world the two characters can’t control. The conversation moves to the first copy of The Illusion of Life that Raúl ever owned, the classic book on making drawings feel alive, and the decision that book pushed him into. Ervin explains how the violin became the centre of the film, including a line about the instrument that he picked up from a violin teacher and isn’t sure she knows he used (the lead violin is played by Joy Yong, and the score is by Ricky Ho and Isabel Latorre). Both directors get candid about the long stretches when money and momentum were hard to find, and Ervin admits how close he came to walking away. They finish by looking ahead to 2050, when almost nobody who lived through the occupation will be left to tell it.
An essential watch for anyone who has kept working on something long after everyone else would have walked away.
