#OnTheBigScreen: Drama and animation

Manchester by the Sea

The potent human drama tells the story of the Chandler family, a working class family from Massachusetts. After Lee’s (Casey Affleck) older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) suddenly passes away, he is made the legal guardian of his nephew (Lucas Hedges). Lee is forced to deal with a tragic past that separated him from his wife Randi (Michelle Williams) and the community where he was born and raised.

Set in the North Shore of Massachusetts, the film is written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan (You Can Count On Me, Margaret), with Matt Damon as one of the producers. “I was interested in someone who has endured something that was unbearable, but because of his attachments to the rest of his family, he can’t simply disappear,’’ says Lonergan. “How people survive what they survive is a mystery to me. It’s interesting that what causes that amount of anguish, and can help you through it, is love, and you don’t feel that kind of pain unless you lose someone you love. But love is the only thing that can get you through that kind of distress.’’

Ballerina

Félicie is a young orphan from Brittany who has only one passion: dance. With her best friend Victor, who wants to become a great inventor, they come up with a madcap scheme to escape their orphanage for Paris, the City of Lights, with its Eiffel Tower still under construction! Félicie has to fight like she has never fought before. She has to outdo herself and learn from her mistakes to make her craziest dream come true: becoming a prima ballerina at the Paris Opera...

This English-language French-Canadian 3D computer-animated musical fantasy adventure film was co-directed by Eric Summer and Éric Warin. Summer, Carol Noble and Laurent Zeitoun wrote the screenplay, with music by Klaus Badelt. The film features the voices of Elle Fanning, Dane DeHaan, Maddie Ziegler and Carly Rae Jepsen. Says producer Yann Zenou “For us, cinema means sublimating the real world to understand it better and accept it. Along with our imaginations, animation is the ideal way to express our dreams. I think that the first film we make in our heads as children is a cartoon that bridges the real world and our imaginations. A cartoon is what links childhood and the world of adults.”

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