In Florence Miailhe’s Butterfly, the life of Alfred Nakache is chronicled as he swims in the 1936 Berlin Olympics before being sent to Auschwitz and losing his family, only to return again after the Holocaust for another chance at the 1948 Olympics.
Awards Buzz spoke with producer Ron Dyens, who won an Oscar last year for the animated feature Flow and offered nothing but praise for Miailhe. He spoke about the very positive reception the film has received around the world:
“People are very touched because it’s a real journey that we live, of course. What I like when I produce a movie is universalism of topics. It’s not only connected to what happened to the Jewish people during the Second World War. It’s a question of a family, it’s a question of accepting all your wounds, to live with your wounds, to transmit also because the last image of the movie, it’s Alfred Nakache who teaches kids how to swim, and he says, if you remember the last sentence, he says a kind of sentence like, ‘We don’t have to fear the situation. We don’t have to fear the sea, to face the water. Let’s go.’ And it’s funny because, I discovered that there are some connections also, you spoke about Flow, but there are connections also with water, you see, and about working together, helping each other, cooperation. Because it’s not a mute movie, there is some dialogue, I think that there is a distance also, you are not as immersed as in Flow, and the camera is not the same. But I think that people are very touched by the story, and I think that the music also, from Pierre Oberkampf, helps them to dive into this story.”
Watch the video above to hear how Dyens approaches all of his projects, animated or not, and the films he’s most passionate about this year.
Butterfly is on the Oscar shortlist for Best Animated Short.
