Animation? “Only a country without vision would waste all this talent”

“TWe have the talent of the Portuguese, we have the talent and know-how of the producers and we lack one thing, which is very little and can be achieved quickly. (…) Only a country without vision would waste all this talent”, underlined the director, who on Thursday opens in cinemas the film “Nayola”, the first animated feature film in more than twenty years of career.

For José Miguel Ribeiro, director and producer, “the jump to this large-scale dimension” would imply a greater involvement of the television channels, the Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual (ICA) and “perhaps also the Ministry of Economy, why not ?”.

“If the Ministry of Economy invests in the footwear and textile industry, why doesn’t it invest in the animation industry, which is new?”, he asked.

The most recent data from the ICA indicate that in 2022, 23 animated films were produced, among which three feature films stand out — “O Natal do Bruno Aleixo”, “Nayola” and “Os demons of my grandfather” – – which represent an unprecedented number in the 100 years of animation cinema history in Portugal.

José Miguel Ribeiro, 57 years old, who works from a production studio in Montemor-o-Novo and who took almost a decade to produce “Nayola”, remembers that the naming of the short film “Ice Merchants”, by João Gonzalez, for the Oscars, gave visibility to the sector.

“There is a difference between visibility and deep work, construction. And that started many years ago. Society only sees from a certain point, until then things seemed invisible. (The nomination) has a lot of meaning, but it has a lot of visibility . If it spreads to people, to society and reaches politicians, we can hope that it has some consequence. And the consequence is to create the possibility for all graduates who leave schools… the work that exists at the moment is very unstable, very irregular”, he opined.

For José Miguel Ribeiro, the large-scale production he wants for Portugal involves creating more animation series, which can be broadcast internationally on television and ‘streaming’.

“This large-scale production, with a television leading, committing, making a bet regularly every year, in different projects, with different producers, we can create a fabric of national production with some international significance and we can export animation, which is what is done in France”, he said.

The creation of “Nayola”, which had one million euros in financial support from the ICA, was made possible by having an international co-production with Belgium, France and the Netherlands.

José Miguel Ribeiro, who leads the production company Praça Filmes, made the world premiere of “Nayola” in the spring of 2022 at the festival in Annecy (France), the most relevant for animation cinema, and since then it has won a dozen awards.

“Nayola” has a screenplay by Virgílio Almeida based on a play by José Eduardo Agualusa and Mia Couto, about the civil war in Angola, between the past and the present, from the perspective of three generations of women from the same family.

“What motivated me was this dimension of the family in war, how families survive war. (…) What I found interesting was leaving my position as a European, and Portuguese, and realizing how war is elsewhere,” he explained.

About “Nayola”, the director also underlined the desire to leave his personal experience in relation to war and Africa.

This is because, before “Nayola”, José Miguel Ribeiro made “Fragments”, an animation ‘short’ about memories of the colonial war, inspired by the story of his father, a combatant in Guinea-Bissau.

“I saw the war inside my house without having been to an armed conflict. (…) War is not just for those who experience it in space and time. There is a gigantic social contamination and that was a learning experience. I didn’t know. I spent my whole life watching war movies and ‘cowboys’ and I thought that when it didn’t happen it was because there was no war anymore. This dimension of war is structural in my training and in my life”, he said.

In “Nayola”, in addition to the war, present throughout the narrative, there is also the question of women’s affirmation, and “the magical dimension, of the wonderful”, of the Africans’ relationship with nature.

“Europeans say that the film is poetic, very beautiful and visual, but the question of poetic has to do with the metaphors that the film uses. Metaphors in Africa are used to talk about everyday life. They don’t see nature outside There isn’t a word for nature in traditional African languages, because they don’t live outside of it”, said José Miguel Ribeiro.

Also Read: ‘Ice Merchants’ won five awards at Monstra