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Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Laying the Foundation: How Catalonia Is Building a Global Animation Powerhouse
In 2023, Spanish animation stunned the world when 'Robot Dreams,' a melancholic tale of friendship and loss directed by Pablo Berger, earned an Oscar nomination. Though Berger hails from Madrid, the film was backed by the Barcelona-based Arcadia Motion Pictures, a detail that underscores a larger trend: Catalonia has quietly but steadily transformed into one of Europe's most exciting hubs for animation. Now, in 2025, the Catalan animation industry stands at a pivotal moment. With a wave of exciting new titles like 'Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake,' 'The Light of Aisha' and 'The Treasure of Barracuda,' and a robust ecosystem of institutions and talent behind them, this momentum no longer feels like a fluke; it feels like a movement. More from Variety Xilam and TF1 Team Up on Animated Series 'Turbo Twins' Ahead of Annecy, MIFA Dandelooo Cinéma Pre-Sells 'Born in the Jungle' to Several Key Territories (EXCLUSIVE) Australia's Pixel Zoo Animation Studios Launches L.A.-Based Original IP Unit Pixel Labs (EXCLUSIVE) Ahead of this year's Annecy Animation Festival, Variety spoke with the producers who are making waves in the region to better understand what's behind this creative boom and what challenges remain. Their insights reveal a sector rich in talent, grounded in community, and reaching for global influence. Public Support: The Cornerstone of Catalonia's Animation Boom Nearly everyone in the industry agrees: without consistent public investment, Catalan animation would not be where it is today. 'One of the key factors has been the strong public support for animated features from institutions like ICEC and ICAA,' says filmmaker and producer Alba Sotorra, referring to the Catalan government's film-TV agency and the Spanish film agency. She is currently developing the eco-fable 'Pink Punk Delta,' which will be presented at this year's MIFA Feature Pitches at Annecy. 'Their funding has made it possible for producers to take creative risks and develop ambitious projects'. Mikel Mas, producer of Annecy competition player 'Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake' – the first ever Catalan stop-motion feature – concurs. 'There's been a real push from the administration. ICEC, especially, has made a strong commitment to animation, both in series and feature films. That's what's made this moment possible.' This public investment isn't just symbolic. The creation of a dedicated animation funding line in 2017 allowed ICEC to finance hours of animated content each year, strengthening an industry that had once struggled to sustain itself. Education and Talent Development: A Pipeline of Excellence Talent has never been in short supply in Catalonia, but now, thanks to its educational infrastructure, it is more visible and employable than ever. Sotorra highlights the region's world-class institutions: 'Catalonia is home to some of the most respected schools in Spain and Europe, L'Idem, La Salle and master's programs at ESCAC and Pompeu Fabra. These schools are constantly training great professionals who feed directly into the local industry'. Marta Alonso, executive producer at Teidees and co-producer of the upcoming series 'Under the Sofa,' which the company will be sharing with distributors at this year's Annecy MIFA amrket, sees this as a core pillar of industry growth. 'There's always been talent, but now that talent is more visible because it's being nurtured. If we give people the opportunity to work and grow, the whole sector benefits'. Adding to this are grassroots institutions like Pepe School Land, which focuses on training with open-source software like Blender, lowering barriers to entry and encouraging diverse voices to join the field. International Co-Productions: A Strategic Imperative In today's global animation economy, few independent projects can be produced within a single territory. For Catalan producers, international co-productions are not only an advantage but a necessity. Peekaboo Animation's Iván Agenjo, who will be at this year's MIFA with his company's 2D series projects 'My Little Heroes,' 'WAW Resort' and 'BFFS!,' among other ambitious proposals, breaks it down: 'It's almost impossible to finance a project exclusively with funds from Catalonia or Spain. We always look for international partners, it's part of our DNA.' For Anna Shchur of Siesta Entertainment, whose current project 'Black Moth' is animated in Armenia with creative leadership in the U.S., this strategy is about quality and survival. 'Producing entirely in Catalonia is possible, but it's much more expensive. Co-producing gives us access to different markets, funding systems and talent pipelines.' Siesta will be showing off 'Black Moth' and its 2D kids' series 'Biggie and the Magic Bag' at this year's MIFA. However, co-production also comes with its own complexities. Alonso compares finding the right partner to 'finding the right person to marry… when it works, it's a miracle. When it doesn't, it's a nightmare.' Despite the challenges, these partnerships are crucial for accessing foreign markets. As Shchur notes, 'If you want to distribute in Canada or France, you often need to produce there. Co-production opens that door.' Grounded Storytelling with Global Appeal What truly sets Catalan films apart from the pack is not big-budget aesthetics or groundbreaking technological advances; it's a motivated base of talented and uniquely experienced artists using their craft to tell stories rooted in lived experience and featuring cultural authenticity. 'We have a creative mix that's very special here,' says Sotorra. 'Many animated films are made by directors who come from documentary or live-action backgrounds. They bring a different sensibility, grounded stories, emotional depth.' Mas sees this as a defining strength of 'Olivia,' which deals with childhood homelessness through stop-motion. 'The film speaks to a social issue, but in a way that's accessible to children. That balance, between the heavy and the hopeful, is what makes it powerful'. Agenjo notes that projects must walk a fine line: 'They can be rooted in local culture, but they have to resonate internationally. That's how we attract partners and distributors abroad.' Even commercial projects are incorporating more meaningful themes. Shchur's 'Black Moth' focuses on female empowerment and music as a means of identity-building. 'It's high-quality, and the narrative is strong,' she says. 'It's not just content, it's storytelling with purpose'. Distribution: The Lingering Weak Link For all its strengths, Catalan animation still faces significant hurdles in distribution, especially at home. 'It's actually harder to distribute in Spain than it is abroad,' Shchur admits. Alonso notes a discrepancy in support during and after production has wrapped: 'We need money not just to make the films, but to get them out into the world. Distribution is where we're lagging behind countries like France'. Mas adds that public broadcasters like RTVE and TV3 could be doing more: 'These are public institutions, they should be helping get culturally valuable films in front of more people. When a commercial film like 'Tadeo Jones' ('Tad the Lost Explorer') premieres, it's everywhere. Our films should get that kind of push, too.' There is hope, however. Initiatives like Eurimages and select E.U. distribution grants are beginning to make an impact. But as Mas argues, 'There's a double standard in animation. People expect us to get into Cannes and win awards, but also sell popcorn like Hollywood. We need to recognize both cultural and commercial success.' Looking Ahead With several major projects rolling out in 2025, including 'The Light of Aisha,' 'The Treasure of Barracuda,' and 'Hanna's Forgotten Christmas,' Catalan animation is poised to extend its winning streak. But sustaining this momentum will require more than creative excellence. It demands sustained public investment, better distribution strategies and a continued focus on international collaboration. 'If we maintain the key pillars: public funding, high-level education, international reach and authorial voice, Catalan animation can become a global reference for auteur animation,' says Sotorra. In short, Catalonia's animation industry isn't experiencing a bubble, but the laying of a foundation. And if nurtured properly, Catalonia may soon become one of the world's leading centers for animated storytelling. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Emmy Predictions: Animated Program — Can Netflix Score Big With 'Arcane,' 'Devil May Cry' and the Final Season of 'Big Mouth?' What's Coming to Netflix in June 2025
Sydney Morning Herald
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Robots are everywhere onscreen but are we just looking at ourselves?
I know how I'm supposed to feel about artificial intelligence. Like anyone who pushes words around on a page, I worry large language models will relegate me to the junk pile. I worry smart machines will supplant artists, eliminate jobs and institute a surveillance state – if they don't simply destroy us. I nurture these anxieties reading article after article served to me, of course, by the algorithms powering the phone to which I have outsourced much of my brain. This is how I feel in real life. But when it comes to fiction, fellow humans, I am a traitor to my kind. In any humans-and-robots story, I invariably prefer the fascinating, enigmatic, persevering machines to the boring Homo sapiens. And in spite, or maybe because of, our generalised AI angst, there are plenty of robo-tales to choose from these days. The protagonist of Murderbot, the homicidally funny sci-fi comedy premiering on Friday on Apple TV+, does not reciprocate my admiration. Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgard), a sentient 'security unit', is programmed to protect humans. But it doesn't have to like them, those 'weak-willed', 'stressed-out' bags of perishable flesh it is compelled to serve. Or rather, was compelled. Unbeknown to the company that owns it – a company called the Company, which controls most of the inhabited galaxy – it has disabled the software that forbids it from disobeying. ('It' is the pronoun the show uses; from a physical standpoint, Murderbot has the face of Skarsgard but the crotch of a Ken doll.) It is free to refuse, to flee, to kill. Loading So what does this lethal bot (technically, a cyborg, its circuitry enmeshed with engineered organic matter) want to do with its liberty? Mostly, it wants to watch its shows – thousands of hours of 'premium quality' streaming serials it has downloaded into its memory. It still has to keep its day job, however; if the Company learnt it hacked itself, it would be melted down. Murderbot is assigned to provide security for a team of hippie scientists from an independent 'planetary commune' on an exploratory mission. Their mutual dependence, as they discover a dangerous secret on the desolate planet, provides the pulpy, bloody plot for the first 10-episode season (based on the novel All Systems Red by Martha Wells). But the real killer app of the story, adapted by Chris and Paul Weitz, is the snarky worldview of the artificial life form at its centre. Skarsgard gives a lively reading to the copious voiceover, but just as important is his physical performance, which radiates casual power and agitated wariness. Murderbot is odd, edgy, unmistakably alien, yet its complaint is also crankily familiar. It just wants to be left in peace to binge its programs. As for our own shows, we lately seem to be swimming in stories about robot companions. The film Robot Dreams (Stan* and Amazon Prime Video) is the bittersweet story of a dog and its mail-order android. In The Wild Robot (Netflix), a stranded robot channels her maternal energy towards an orphaned bird. In M3GAN, whose sequel premieres in June, a child's companion bot carries out her protective mandate all too enthusiastically. (M3GAN, like the retro-bot in the German Netflix thriller Cassandra, complicates the pattern in which female-coded robots tend to be for nurturing and male-coded robots for murdering). These stories follow age-old templates — the fairy godmother, the gentle giant, the golem that breaks its master's control. But there is also often a modern anxiety about how artificial intelligence might transform us, which is built into the quirky, one-season Sunny. In that 2024 Apple TV+ series, Suzie (Rashida Jones), an American woman in near-future Kyoto, inherits a 'homebot' named Sunny from her engineer husband, who went missing in a plane crash, along with their son. The show's thriller plot involves the mob and a black market in hacked bots, but its heart is the prickly relationship between Suzie, a longtime technophobe, and Sunny. Sunny – perky, solicitous, a bit needy – was literally made to be loved, with a lollipop head, expressive anime eyes and an endearing voice (provided by Joanna Sotomura). Sunny wants desperately to help, a compulsion that can be exhausting – not unlike the parasocial relationship we have with much of our technology. Sunny is a robot, but she could be your phone, your unintentionally activated Alexa or Siri, the unbidden pop-up on every website asking if you have questions for the chat assistant. Loading A recurrent concern in these stories is that technology is becoming more humanlike – intrusive, insinuating, seeking to create connection. But another anxiety – echoed in series such as Apple TV+'s Severance and Netflix's Black Mirror – is that human consciousness is becoming more machine-like, digitisable and thus controllable. (The universe of Murderbot includes not just robots but 'augmented humans' with chip-enhanced brains. Murderbot considers them Tinkertoy imitations.) To become a machine, after all, is to become usable and, perhaps, dispensable. It's worth noting how many contemporary robot stories are about defective units – the glitchy Sunny, the 'anxious, depressed' Murderbot – or outmoded ones, as if to dramatise how our society and economy treat hardware, whether flesh or silicon, that has outlived its utility. Maybe these broken-toy stories are a way of wrestling, in advance, with our ethical obligations to whatever intelligences we eventually create. Or maybe watching these themes play out in robot stories makes our mortality easier to contemplate – like play-therapy puppets, the bots hold the nightmare at arm's length and abstract it. Here, at least, we have something in common with the protagonist of Murderbot, who, at the end of a long day's killing, wants nothing more than to unwind with shows about humans. Indeed, the closest we get to seeing its gooey, emotional side is through the serials it binges. It is voracious but not indiscriminate; it dismisses the drama 'Strife in the Galaxy' as 'an inferior show, filled with implausible plotlines'. (Even rational, software-based consciousnesses have hate-watches.) Loading Its favourite, on the other hand, is 'The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon', a space melodrama featuring a human starship captain (John Cho) who falls in love with a navigation robot (DeWanda Wise). The show-within-a-show is staged as a wonderfully campy potboiler in the style of old-fashioned syndicated sci-fi. Murderbot devours season after season, without any sense of irony, as an escape from its confounding entanglements with actual people. 'The characters were a lot less depressing than real-life humans,' it says. 'I don't watch serials to remind me of the way things actually are.'
The Age
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Robots are everywhere onscreen but are we just looking at ourselves?
I know how I'm supposed to feel about artificial intelligence. Like anyone who pushes words around on a page, I worry large language models will relegate me to the junk pile. I worry smart machines will supplant artists, eliminate jobs and institute a surveillance state – if they don't simply destroy us. I nurture these anxieties reading article after article served to me, of course, by the algorithms powering the phone to which I have outsourced much of my brain. This is how I feel in real life. But when it comes to fiction, fellow humans, I am a traitor to my kind. In any humans-and-robots story, I invariably prefer the fascinating, enigmatic, persevering machines to the boring Homo sapiens. And in spite, or maybe because of, our generalised AI angst, there are plenty of robo-tales to choose from these days. The protagonist of Murderbot, the homicidally funny sci-fi comedy premiering on Friday on Apple TV+, does not reciprocate my admiration. Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgard), a sentient 'security unit', is programmed to protect humans. But it doesn't have to like them, those 'weak-willed', 'stressed-out' bags of perishable flesh it is compelled to serve. Or rather, was compelled. Unbeknown to the company that owns it – a company called the Company, which controls most of the inhabited galaxy – it has disabled the software that forbids it from disobeying. ('It' is the pronoun the show uses; from a physical standpoint, Murderbot has the face of Skarsgard but the crotch of a Ken doll.) It is free to refuse, to flee, to kill. Loading So what does this lethal bot (technically, a cyborg, its circuitry enmeshed with engineered organic matter) want to do with its liberty? Mostly, it wants to watch its shows – thousands of hours of 'premium quality' streaming serials it has downloaded into its memory. It still has to keep its day job, however; if the Company learnt it hacked itself, it would be melted down. Murderbot is assigned to provide security for a team of hippie scientists from an independent 'planetary commune' on an exploratory mission. Their mutual dependence, as they discover a dangerous secret on the desolate planet, provides the pulpy, bloody plot for the first 10-episode season (based on the novel All Systems Red by Martha Wells). But the real killer app of the story, adapted by Chris and Paul Weitz, is the snarky worldview of the artificial life form at its centre. Skarsgard gives a lively reading to the copious voiceover, but just as important is his physical performance, which radiates casual power and agitated wariness. Murderbot is odd, edgy, unmistakably alien, yet its complaint is also crankily familiar. It just wants to be left in peace to binge its programs. As for our own shows, we lately seem to be swimming in stories about robot companions. The film Robot Dreams (Stan* and Amazon Prime Video) is the bittersweet story of a dog and its mail-order android. In The Wild Robot (Netflix), a stranded robot channels her maternal energy towards an orphaned bird. In M3GAN, whose sequel premieres in June, a child's companion bot carries out her protective mandate all too enthusiastically. (M3GAN, like the retro-bot in the German Netflix thriller Cassandra, complicates the pattern in which female-coded robots tend to be for nurturing and male-coded robots for murdering). These stories follow age-old templates — the fairy godmother, the gentle giant, the golem that breaks its master's control. But there is also often a modern anxiety about how artificial intelligence might transform us, which is built into the quirky, one-season Sunny. In that 2024 Apple TV+ series, Suzie (Rashida Jones), an American woman in near-future Kyoto, inherits a 'homebot' named Sunny from her engineer husband, who went missing in a plane crash, along with their son. The show's thriller plot involves the mob and a black market in hacked bots, but its heart is the prickly relationship between Suzie, a longtime technophobe, and Sunny. Sunny – perky, solicitous, a bit needy – was literally made to be loved, with a lollipop head, expressive anime eyes and an endearing voice (provided by Joanna Sotomura). Sunny wants desperately to help, a compulsion that can be exhausting – not unlike the parasocial relationship we have with much of our technology. Sunny is a robot, but she could be your phone, your unintentionally activated Alexa or Siri, the unbidden pop-up on every website asking if you have questions for the chat assistant. Loading A recurrent concern in these stories is that technology is becoming more humanlike – intrusive, insinuating, seeking to create connection. But another anxiety – echoed in series such as Apple TV+'s Severance and Netflix's Black Mirror – is that human consciousness is becoming more machine-like, digitisable and thus controllable. (The universe of Murderbot includes not just robots but 'augmented humans' with chip-enhanced brains. Murderbot considers them Tinkertoy imitations.) To become a machine, after all, is to become usable and, perhaps, dispensable. It's worth noting how many contemporary robot stories are about defective units – the glitchy Sunny, the 'anxious, depressed' Murderbot – or outmoded ones, as if to dramatise how our society and economy treat hardware, whether flesh or silicon, that has outlived its utility. Maybe these broken-toy stories are a way of wrestling, in advance, with our ethical obligations to whatever intelligences we eventually create. Or maybe watching these themes play out in robot stories makes our mortality easier to contemplate – like play-therapy puppets, the bots hold the nightmare at arm's length and abstract it. Here, at least, we have something in common with the protagonist of Murderbot, who, at the end of a long day's killing, wants nothing more than to unwind with shows about humans. Indeed, the closest we get to seeing its gooey, emotional side is through the serials it binges. It is voracious but not indiscriminate; it dismisses the drama 'Strife in the Galaxy' as 'an inferior show, filled with implausible plotlines'. (Even rational, software-based consciousnesses have hate-watches.) Loading Its favourite, on the other hand, is 'The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon', a space melodrama featuring a human starship captain (John Cho) who falls in love with a navigation robot (DeWanda Wise). The show-within-a-show is staged as a wonderfully campy potboiler in the style of old-fashioned syndicated sci-fi. Murderbot devours season after season, without any sense of irony, as an escape from its confounding entanglements with actual people. 'The characters were a lot less depressing than real-life humans,' it says. 'I don't watch serials to remind me of the way things actually are.'
