When Pablo Berger began work on , his first animated film as a director, he looked to a major source of inspiration: Studio Ghibli’s Hayao Miyazaki. “We’d always say, ‘What would Miyazaki do with this problem?’” The story of a dog who builds and befriends a robot, adapted from a hit 2007 graphic novel by Sara Varon, is Berger’s first animated film, and follows three live-action films he has directed. The book first caught his eye in 2010.
“I collect ‘no words’ books [...
] children’s books that have no words,” he says. “After 20 pages [..
.] I realised this was an adult graphic novel.” Certainly, Varon’s work feels in step with the current movement in cinema; at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, the feline-driven and the Auschwitz story showed that adult animations are in vogue again.
It wasn’t until 2018, as Berger was considering his next project, that he read Varon’s book again. “This time, when I get to the end, I have tears in my eyes,” he says. The way he describes it, Berger was already visualising the film as he was reading it.
“In a way, I was making the film as I was reading this book.” With no dialogue, Berger set out to craft a pure silent movie. “I really love this sort of storytelling,” he says.
“And my favourite period of cinema is the [19]20s. That for me is the golden era of cinema when silent movies really got complex. I feel very comfortable telling stories visually.
” His live-action films have always been inspir.
