PARK CITY, Utah _ For director Michael Dudok de Wit, seeing his film "The Red Turtle" get nominated for an Oscar for animated feature was a shock. "The competition was really strong," he said from his home in London. "I knew our film had a chance. It was unlike any of the other films. But many other films had a huge chance, I think. I was honestly quite nervous!
"On top of that, another French film was nominated, 'My Life as a Zucchini,' also handmade like our film. 'Kubo' was mostly handmade as well. I'm just delighted with all the nominees and of course, for our film and my team."
Q: How did the project first come together, from such disparate cultural backgrounds and influences?
A: It's a miracle. It was a very unlikely cooperation. (Studio Ghibli co-founder/"Red Turtle" artistic director) Isao Takahata has a mind that is interested in European culture, and I love Japanese art and traditional art especially. We were from totally opposite parts of the world and we each had an openness and a curiosity about each other's culture.
Q: What was behind the choice to tell this story without dialogue?
A: The whole thing started with an invitation from Studio Ghibli saying, "If you want to make your first feature film, we are interested in making it." It was a total dream offer � it was so surreal. I've seen and admired all of their films, and on top of that they are very independent-minded. My reply was, 'Yes, of course!'
In the beginning I had some dialogue in my script, just a few moments to feel closeness to the main characters. We experimented with that but ... at some point in development, we dropped all the dialogue. But I felt strongly that it should feel as though the people in the film can talk, and they do � it's just that in our film we don't see them talk. We wanted it to be very natural.
Q: What does it say about the academy and the animation community that such a diverse spectrum of animated films were nominated this year?
A: It's striking: On one hand, the members have voted for some very solid quality computer-animated films which have a traditional approach to the story. And on the other hand, they chose two films from Europe that were handmade, made on a small budget, and a film from Oregon with puppet animation which was beautifully, beautifully made. In other words, they clearly had a very open attitude. Some films are more experimental than others, but they all have a place among the nominations.
