Bruno Collet Starts Work on New Stop-Motion Short: ATOMIK TOUR
Skwigly
Bruno Collet’s ATOMIK TOUR (Image © Vivement Lundi ! / MAUR Film)
Four years after the international success of the Oscar nominated and Annecy’s Cristal winner MEMORABLE, the French director Bruno Collet is back on set with a new stop-motion short: ATOMIK TOUR. These coproduction between Vivement Lundi ! (France) and MAUR Film (Czech Republic) is now shooting in France and will be on screen next year.
What would happen if a young YouTuber filming in the irradiated zone of Chernobyl awakened the ghosts of the victims of the 1986 nuclear disaster? Four years after MEMORABLE, his poignant short film about a painter affected by Alzheimer’s disease, Bruno Collet directs his new stop-motion short film, a personal point of view about the dark tourism, this new form of travel to destinations linked to death and disasters.
“I have always thought that certain sites are forever haunted by the events that happened there. From Pompei to the D-Day landing beaches, from the concentration camps to Ground Zero in New York, these places are always inhabited by the ghostly presence of the victims of the tragedies that took place there. For many visitors, silence and meditation reflect the emotion felt in these places of memory.” says Bruno Collet, “However, this feeling does not seem to be shared by everyone. New behaviors reflect a loss of reference, a lack of awareness of the historical weight of these sites, which are increasingly reduced to their tourist dimension alone. Sites subjected to photographic machine-gunning which only has a narcissistic function.”
Bruno Collet’s ATOMIK TOUR (Image © Vivement Lundi ! / MAUR Film)
“Bruno had long wanted to write a film set in the Chernobyl “Zone”. He talked to us about it before making Memorable, but he didn’t find the right angle” say Collet’s producers Jean-François Le Corre and Mathieu Courtois. “Then he discovered Yolocaust, the work of the German-Israeli artist Shahak Shapira, and it changed his point of view on his story, it became something more than a ghost movie. As for Memorable or The Day of glory, Bruno is one more time dealing with memory.”
To fund this ambitious short, Vivement Lundi !, the producer of all Collet films and series for 26 years, decided to team with the Czech Oscar nominated company MAUR film.
I first met Bruno and Jean-François in 2019 in LA on the animation studios Oscar tour. Bruno was quiet and focused, Jean-Francois was friendly and open. In the years that followed, Vivement Lundi ! and I were linked by personal friendship and collaboration on several films (the marathon feature Of Unwanted Things and People, the short Hello Summer and the upcoming animated feature documentary Suzanne). And when Jean-François called me that Bruno has a new script and he is looking for a co-producer, I didn’t hesitate at all. Above and beyond the topic concerning our region, Ukraine and an original perspective on the Chernobyl accident, a surreal look at the strange motives of tourists and magical realism in the space of a few minutes. With that wonderful, focused and quiet Bruno.
Martin Vandas, MAUR Film CEO
Bruno Collet’s ATOMIK TOUR (Image © Vivement Lundi ! / MAUR Film)
The Czech Film Fund gave an amazing support of € 80.000 to ATOMIK TOUR and helped Vivement Lundi ! to secure a € 300.000 budget funded by CNC, France Télévisions, the Breton regional fund Bretagne Cinéma, the local channels TVR, Tébéo and TébéSud, Prociep and Angoa. French and Czech teams decided to share the work with development, puppets, shooting and compositing made in Rennes (France) – in Personne n’est parfait ! Studio – and set buildings, original music, sound design and mix made in Prague. Two Czech artists – DOP and an animator – joined the French team in Brittany. The shooting started in last week and will run until the beginning of December. Vivement Lundi ! expects to have the completed movie on screen next spring.