Magic Atlas Is First Animated TIFF Competition Pick — SkimNews
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- Magic Atlas became the first animated feature selected for the Tokyo International Film Festival’s competition after 10 years of development.
- Magic Atlas is set in Luocha, a coal-mining empire where flying is forbidden; every 60 years, a festival erases memories of the preceding era, and a jailed magician gives an orphan boy a book pointing toward the suppressed past.
- Sun Xun put all his savings into the project and took out loans after pandemic shutdowns dried up gallery sales, personally seeking buyers when normal sales channels disappeared.
- Sun Xun said the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and his conversion to Buddhism shaped the film, while emphasizing that he was not using it to comment on any one event.
- Sun Xun studied Dunhuang murals, Song dynasty painting and calligraphy, then made Magic Atlas move among woodblock prints, ink painting and vivid color, often letting images do the work conventional plotting might spell out.
- Sun Xun opposes films that emphasize story for packaging or commercial purposes, arguing that cinema should express a state of being; he cites Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1983 film Nostalghia and Béla Tarr as models of sincerity.
- Sun Xun said he had hoped to finish Magic Atlas before his child grew up and while his parents were alive, but his father died one year before its completion.
Why it matters: TIFF audiences gain access to the festival’s first animated competition feature, a work that often carries meaning through images rather than conventional plotting. Sun Xun reached that milestone with 10 years of work, his savings and loans, and a film he says should express a state of being instead of serving commercial packaging.
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