Still from Ari Folman's "The Congress", photo: Gutek Film.
Featuring Robin Wright, Harvey Keitel and Paul Giamatti, The Congress is based on a novel by Stanisław Lem. Oscar nominated Waltz with Bashir's notorious director comments on his choice of adaptation, "I regard Lem as a visionary writer and philosopher", the director says, "He wrote The Futurological Congress in the late sixties, but predicted many events that followed later on. He depicted the world, in fact, as it is today".
Folman's Congress is not a classical animation. Traditional pictures intertwine with anime-style animation reminiscent of Hayao Miyazaki film. The animated scenes are set in the imagination of the protagonist Robin Wright (played by... Robin Wright) while reality becomes a mere dream created by scientists. In the end, ruled by technological progress, people become prisoners of the system they helped create. Read why according to Bartosz Staszczyszyn writing for Culture.pl The Congress remains an unfulfilled dream.
Among the 46 animations, the three finalists alongside the winning Congress were Jasmine, a French production directed by Alain Ughetto, and Pinocchio by Enzo d'Alo (a co-production between Italy, France and Belgium with contribution from Luxembourg).
Folman's adaptation was filmed by Michał Englert and coproduced by the Polish Film Institute anbd Opus Film. Among the two hundred animators from different coutries were specialists from the Studio Filmów Rysunkowych in Bielsko-Biała.
Editor: Mai Jones 09.12.2013 based on the Polish language article by BS and PISF