Entertainment · Film · 2 hrs ago
Sun Xun’s Magic Atlas Becomes Tokyo Film Festival’s First Animated Competition Feature
Chinese artist and filmmaker Sun Xun’s Magic Atlas is the first animated feature selected for the Tokyo International Film Festival’s competition.
The film took a decade to make and combines animation with woodblock prints, ink painting and other visual styles.
Its story is set in Luocha, a coal-mining empire where flying is forbidden and a festival every 60 years erases people’s memories of the previous era.
In prison, a magician gives an orphan boy a book that points him toward the past the empire tried to erase.
Sun says he invested his savings and took out loans after the pandemic shut galleries and dried up art sales.
He drew on global events and different cultural traditions to explore divisions, while aiming to make a work that expressed a state of being rather than prioritising a clear commercial story.
Exhibitions are planned in the United States and Singapore, but venues and dates have not been announced.
Sun has also begun a new feature that will continue the film’s world and focus on one person’s experience of memory loss.
Sun Xun’s Magic Atlas is the first animated feature selected for the Tokyo International Film Festival’s competition.
The film took a decade to make and is set in Luocha, a coal-mining empire where flying is forbidden.
Its story follows an orphan boy who receives a book pointing him toward a past the empire has tried to erase.
The film combines woodblock prints, ink painting and vivid color, drawing on visual traditions from different periods and cultures.
Sun says he invested all his savings in the project and took out loans after the pandemic disrupted his art sales.
- Who
- Chinese artist and filmmaker Sun Xun made the film.
- What
- Magic Atlas became the first animated feature selected for the Tokyo International Film Festival’s competition.
- When
- The film was a decade in the making. The sources do not state when it was selected.
- Where
- The competition is part of the Tokyo International Film Festival. The film is set in the fictional empire of Luocha.
- Why
- Sun says the film reflects influences from global events, different cultures and political divisions. He made it as a defining work of his own.
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
Sun Xun worked on Magic Atlas over the course of ten years.
Sun’s father died.
Magic Atlas was selected as the first animated feature in the Tokyo International Film Festival’s competition.
- Director
- Sun Xun
- Setting
- Luocha, a coal-mining empire where flying is forbidden
- Festival distinction
- First animated feature selected for the Tokyo International Film Festival’s competition
- Production period
- A decade
- Recurring event in the story
- A festival every 60 years leaves the population unable to remember the era before it
2 sources
What people are saying
I never thought of ‘Magic Atlas’ as an animated film. To me, it brings together many art forms. Animation is simply the label we use for its form. I’m glad people at TIFF understood the effort I put into it,
In my own artistic thinking, I believe every creator should have one ‘all-in’ moment in their life: to make a defining work that takes everything out of them. For me, ‘Magic Atlas’ was that all-in moment,
Film cannot address reality directly, but it can take a wider view. It can express how we understand the world and what we are curious about,
I’m actually against ‘story.’ I don’t mean that films shouldn’t have stories. I object to films that emphasize story for the sake of packaging and commercial purposes. As an art form, film should express a state of being.