Bertelli Debuts Paper Stop-Motion Feature at Annecy
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- Stefano Bertelli directs 'Spacetime Chronicles,' a 71-minute paper-based stop-motion feature about a man named Fred lost in limbo and guided by a cat acting as his conscience, marking his formal feature debut.
- Marcel Jean, Annecy's artistic director, praised the film's 'surrealist style' and 'DIY approach,' comparing it to Michel Gondry's dream films and calling it 'a genuine technical masterpiece.'
- Urban Sales, a Paris-based sales company, boarded the film ahead of Annecy, where it screens in the Contrechamps selection.
- Riccardo Orlandi, Bertelli's creative partner since their early-2000s amateur horror films and co-founder of Seenfilm, built large single-block paper sets including an airliner interior supported by stepper motors, robotics and LED wiring.
- Bertelli chose paper as the medium because its fragility — its tendency to bend, tear, burn and collapse — mirrors the film's themes of memory, identity, uncertainty and an uncontrollable shifting reality.
- The production took roughly four to five months (not continuously) and consumed an estimated several thousand sheets of 100×70 cm paper ordered on a rolling basis.
- At the Brussels premiere, Bertelli sat anonymously in the back row and watched a viewer fill out a 10/10 rating card, then thanked him — illustrating his stated preference for spontaneous, unfiltered audience feedback.
- Bertelli credited rising music-video budgets and shrinking 'mental space' for pushing him toward animation as 'a freedom that the real world would never have allowed me to have.'
Why it matters: Bertelli's pivot from high-profile music videos (Eminem, Pink Floyd, Robbie Williams) to a self-financed paper stop-motion feature — and its placement in Annecy's Contrechamps sidebar with Paris-based Urban Sales attached — signals that DIY auteur animation with strong authorial voice can still land at a top-tier festival, even without traditional studio backing. For independent animators, the project models how to convert a personal obsession (paper craft) into a feature-length narrative vehicle.
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