Acclaimed Animator Anca Damian Lines Up Live-Action Feature ‘First People on Earth’ (EXCLUSIVE)
Acclaimed Romanian animator Anca Damian has lined up her next live-action feature.
The filmmaker behind Annecy top prizewinner “Crulic: The Path to Beyond” and “Marona’s Fantastic Tale” will write and direct “First People on Earth,” a tragicomic family saga about a biracial woman re-experiencing her native Namibia after decades in Europe.
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Returning to her birth country for a family funeral, and bringing her non-verbal, pre-adolescent son in tow, the heroine falls in with a troupe of theatrical Bushmen – an Indigenous tribe, divorced from their historic lands, forced to re-enact ancestral myths for tourist dollars.
Michaël Goldberg, from Belgium’s Daylight Films, will produce, with the filmmakers now scouting for an additional European production partner. Though written and conceived to shoot fast with a principally non-professional cast, Damian has nevertheless eyed an internationally-renowned performer for the lead. Once locked, the filmmaker plans to shoot the project quick order. The film will deal in dreams, mythology, and the strained legacy of post-colonial Namibia.
This latest project is but one of many for the industrious Damian, who tells Variety she has never been busier.
The filmmaker was on-hand at this year’s MIA Market in Rome to pitch “Motherhood,” an adult-skewing animated short following a young girl’s sentimental education from birth until the cusp of maternity, with French powerhouse Miyu Productions slated to co-produce and Gallic actor Lizzie Brocheré (of “American Horror Story” and “Marona’s Fantastic Tale”) lending her voice.
Damian is also readying her fifth animated feature, “Starseed,” an African futurist time-bender tracking the adventures of a young albino girl, Loveness. Damian co-wrote the project with Zimbabwean writer and Booker Prize nominee NoViolet Bulawayo, and recently brought the project to the Venice Production Bridge. Romania’s Aparte Films and France’s Special Touch Studios will produce.
“We’re quite advanced on many levels,” says Damian. “We’ve got all the sets done, we have the characters fixed, many shots modeled, and the voices recorded. We’re just waiting for [the last round of financing] to come through so we can start animating the characters and then to begin rendering. We’re really well into production.”
By way of visuals, Damian developed the 3D animated project with concept art from longtime collaborator Gina Thorstensen and with sets designed by South African architect Mphethi Morojele, who conceived the Freedom Park heritage site in Pretoria.
While juggling production and development duties, Damian continues to court inspiration wherever it may come. The filmmaker recently served on the jury at France’s European Festival of Fantastic Films in Strasbourg, where she met “Brazil” director Terry Gilliam for the first time.
“After speaking with him, on my train ride home, I thought up a new project,” she laughs. “And I said, no, no, stop there. This is too much. But I’m overflowing with ideas!”
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