'Arco' chases the Oscars

French comic book illustrator Ugo Bienvenu has taken his first leap into feature animation with Arco, a dreamy, optimistic adventure financed by Oscar-winner Natalie Portman.

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The film, crowned at the Annecy animation festival, is now being positioned for an Academy Awards run. Yet Bienvenu admits the campaign feels “bizarre”, confessing that awards can be both blessing and curse.

“My craft is to make things and to make things, you have to be light, at ease enough to imagine,” he says.

Instead of adapting one of his graphic novels for Hollywood, Bienvenu chose to create something new.

Arco tells the story of a boy from a distant future where humans live in harmony with nature on cloud platforms, allowing earth to heal.