EXCLUSIVE: Olivier Clert’s animated feature Lucy Lost has secured key territory sales ahead of its first competition screening at Annecy film festival on June 22.
The film has sold to Germany (Neue Visionnen), Spain (Vertigo), Italy (Movies Inspired), Portugal (Cinemundo), China (Blue Time Media), Japan (Twin Co), Latin America (Canibal), Switzerland (Agora), Austria (Panda), Greece (Weirdwave), Bulgaria and ex-Yugoslavia (MCF), Romania (Yay Films), Baltic states (Kino Pavasaris), Poland (New Horizon), Turkey (Sugarworkz), Morocco and Tunisia (Facility) and Mongolia (Filmbridge). Goodfellas Animation handles world sales.
Based on Michael Morpurgo’s 2014 book Listen To The Moon, the film debuted as a Family Screening title in the Special Screenings strand at Cannes last month.
It is produced by Marc Du Pontavice for French animation studio Xilam. Xilam’s feature thriller The Wolf is also being showcased in the festival’s works-in-progress strand, and its horror series The Doomies in the TV films category.
Narrative
Set during the First World War, Lucy Lost follows a mysterious 11-year-old girl living with a family on the Isles of Scilly off the English coast. Through visions no-one else can see, Lucy meets a secret friend, Milly, and the duo set off on a quest to discover the secret of Lucy’s powers.
Du Pontavice first acquired rights to Listen To The Moon in 2017, and set about making it as a miniseries, but struggled to unite the two parallel stories of the novel into the episodic format.
Xilam had just started anew on the project as a feature film in 2022, when the producer met Clert, who had worked extensively with Sergio Pablos, including as storyboard artist on Klaus.
“Olivier brought his magic sense of narrative, and found this incredible solution of mixing the fate of the two characters,” says Du Pontavice.
“It was so different from all the movies I used to work on,” says Clert of the visuals that enticed him to the project. “I felt there was a way to explore something more psychological, more intimate.”
The team did not show the visuals to acclaimed UK author Morpurgo until they had a completed animatic, a first animated version of the storyboard. “We wanted him to understand completely what we were doing,” says Du Pontavice. “When he came to the studio and saw it, he said ‘I wish I had seen the film before I wrote the book’, which is an enormous compliment from a great storyteller.”
Le Pacte will release the film theatrically in France on October 28, while Canal+ acquired French pay-TV rights when boarding the project in late 2023.
Previous Xilam feature, 2019’s Oscar-nominated I Lost My Body, was dubbed into English with a voice cast that included Dev Patel and Alia Shawkat. An English dub will be made for Lucy Lost once the US distributor is confirmed, with a deal imminent. “We’ll record this in the UK, because it’s an English story, it has to sound English,” says Du Pontavice.
Despite the early 20th century setting, Clert wanted the primary Lucy Lost characterisation to be timeless. “She feels rejected, she tries to find where she belongs,” says the director. “When you’re in this moment of childhood, you try to find who you are. That’s something we can all relate to.”
“In the process of writing, storyboarding and producing this film, it’s amazing how relevant this story has become between 2022 and 2026,” says Du Pontavice, with global conflicts recurring in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran across that time, as well as “a world that is being polarised, there is much more suspicion, hatred, rejection.”
“Whether from old Disney or Miyazaki, I grew up with stories that are not afraid to be traumatic. As the world of animation in cinema is so dominated by comedy these days, as Europeans we wanted to explore something that is neither Japanese nor American, but dares to tell an intense story.
“From a psychological construction purpose for kids, it’s important for them to be told stories of drama. And not only seeing that in reality, but through fiction. It helps them understand these terrible things that are happening.”
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