Louise Bagnall's 'Julián' Premieres at TIFF — SkimNews
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- Louise Bagnall, a Cartoon Saloon animator with an Oscar nomination for animated short "Late Afternoon," makes her feature directorial debut with "Julián," which is premiering at TIFF and looking for distribution.
- The animated film "Julián" is based on Jessica Love's children's book "Julián Is a Mermaid" and follows a 7-year-old boy who spends summer with his abuela in Brooklyn while pursuing his dream of becoming a mermaid.
- Zoe Saldaña is one of the executive producers, with Film New Europe handling international sales and CAA Film Sales holding U.S. rights.
- Screenwriter Juliany Taveres (from Brooklyn) and co-director Guillaume Lorin (raised in the Caribbean) brought regional specificity to the project, which Bagnall said was central to deepening the adaptation beyond the source book.
- Beyond its joyful, colorful celebration of Latin culture, the film probes intergenerational tension — Julián's mermaid imagination acts as a catalyst for his abuela to "re-embrace" long-buried memories of her life in the Dominican Republic.
- Bagnall emphasized the production's analog craft: all backgrounds are drawn on paper with pencils and markers, and characters are hand-drawn before digital animation — deliberately using "the same tools that Julián would have in his pencil case."
Why it matters: The TIFF premiere is an active distribution marketplace, meaning the deals struck here determine how and where audiences will eventually see the film. With Zoe Saldaña as a name-attach executive producer and CAA handling U.S. sales, the premiere is the commercial inflection point for a hand-drawn animated feature positioning itself as a deliberate counterweight to AI-era production.
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