Still: Flatastic - Alice Saey

Childhood friends Alice Saey and Léa Perret have known each other since they were eight years old. Now, Saey, a Franco-Scottish graphic artist and filmmaker, and Perret, a writer and actress, have collaborated on the animated short Flatastic* (a world premiere in IFFR’s Tiger Short competition).

“The desire to make the film first came from a desire to make something together,” Saey says of her collaboration with Perret. “We’ve been best friends for ages. I went to art school and she went to the conservatory for acting. When we both graduated from our universities, we thought it was the perfect moment to combine our talents!”

Saey had already been exploring animation, primarily through music videos, but was keen to make a narrative feature. Perret had just written her first theatre play. It seemed good timing to “brainstorm about what we could do together - that is how it started.” 

Flatastic is an animated eco fable, made in iridescent colours. It portrays a world in which humans have been suffocating manta rays with their plastic waste. The manta rays rise up in rebellion and literally flatten the humans. 

“We were quite anxious about the future in general,” the director remembers her early conversations about the project with Perret.

“I think that is quite specific to our generation. We were just feeling that we had grown up as adults in a world of economic crisis and now environmental crisis.”

They wanted their film to explore their generation’s concerns about everything from economic inequality to climate change. “And we started elaborating on anthropomorphism and how we are stuck in our roles as humans.”

In Flatastic, the human characters are deliberately rendered as bland and faceless. Their features have been smudged out.

“The core of what I wanted to explore was group behaviour and not to conceive humans as characters,” Saey explains. “The way we look at fish, we see them as all looking exactly the same. I wanted to create that with humans.”

Production took three years. “Of course, the amount of work was challenging to manage,” the director sighs. 

Flatastic was co-produced by Miyu Productions, leading Dutch indie outfit Keplerfilm and Spotted Bird, the Rotterdam-based animation production company founded in 2021 by industry veteran Peter Lindhout, (who works closely with Kepler).

“At first, the production was entirely French and then we needed some extra funding and it made sense for me to do that in Holland because I was already living there,” Saey explains.

The young director grew up in Paris but studied briefly in Rotterdam. After she graduated from Haute école des arts du Rhin in Strasbourg, she moved back to the Netherlands and has now been based in Rotterdam for eight years. 

“I still have very strong connections to France because my family is there and I have a lot of French commissions and clients,” she notes of her flourishing career as a graphic artist in France. Among her current commissions is a project to create a mural for a new Paris Metro station. However, she also enthuses about Dutch design culture. “That’s what attracted me in the first place…it’s very contemporary, dynamic and modern.”

Saey co-founded Rotterdam-based production company/animation collective Tinsel with two Dutch colleagues, Wiep Teeuwisse and Nienke Deutz. “We’ve been working on each other’s projects for the last four years,” she reflects. The trio curate and screen films together as well as produce them. She adds that the Dutch animation scene is smaller than in France. “[But] you actually get to make connections faster. The network is rich and interesting. I really feel motivated to keep developing in Holland and participating in the animation scene, both locally and on an international level, by creating connections with my French background.”

IFFR takes place on January 25 - February 4, find the Dutch line-up here. Or discover IFFR on https://iffr.com/en.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund