Following his acclaimed animated documentary Waltz With Bashir, an exploration of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, director Ari Folman is taking on another gloomy wartime tale in The Diary of Anne Frank – and the first images from the production have now appeared online.
Published on the Israeli website Mako’s Cinemascope, the images show Folman at work on both traditional drawn animation scenes and those using stop-motion, where models of the characters which will be blended with animated backgrounds. Last year Folman said he was hoping to make the entire film using stop-motion, but Cinemascope says the eventual production process will depend on the level of funding the film receives.
The film will focus on Kitty, the figure that Anne Frank wrote her diary entries to, living in Amsterdam during the second world war; the film imagines Kitty discovering the diary, and unfolding Frank’s story as she reads it.
Andy Gent, the puppeteer who worked on Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox, is creating the models, while art director and illustrator David Polonsky, who helped craft the aesthetic of Waltz With Bashir and Folman’s 2013 sci-fi film The Congress. The preparatory work is going on at London’s Passion Studios.
Announcing the film in 2013, Folman spoke of the “real need for new artistic material to keep the memory [of Frank] alive for younger generations.” His own parents were Holocaust survivors, who were sent to Auschwitz the day after they were married in the Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland.
Cinemascope reports that the film could take years to realise, given its funding requirements and the length of time needed for the animation. The site says that Folman is lining up another as-yet-unconfirmed film to direct in the interim.
