‘Death Does Not Exist’ Director Félix Dufour-Laperrière Gives Insight into His Existential Annecy Feature

This article was written for the May-June ’25 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 350).

EXCLUSIVE: Canadian writer/director/animator Félix Dufour-Laperrière is no stranger to Annecy and other prestigious animation festivals. His striking and highly original shorts (M, The Day Is Listening, Rosa Rosa) and features (Ville Neuve, Archipelago) have received much praise at animation events around the world. So it’s no surprise that his latest movie, the bold and ambitious feature titled Death Does Not Exist (La mort n’existe pas) was a Cannes Directors’ Fortnight selection and a feature competition nominee at Annecy this year.

The 2D-animated entry centers on the dilemmas faced by a young woman who abandons her friends when they make a failed attempt at an armed attack on rich landowners. The talented Montreal-based director was kind enough to answer a few of our questions via Zoom, just days before he took off on his trip to Cannes:

Animation Magazine: Congratulations on the debut of your sophisticated and thought-provoking movie at Cannes and Annecy. Let’s talk about the origins and inspiration of the film.

Félix Dufour-Laperrière: I started writing the script almost 10 years ago, so it evolved a lot in the process. We began work on the movie towards the end of 2020. It was a bit darker and more desperate in tone, but it became more lively, and the focus turned on love, friendship and relationship between the main characters.

Your movie begins with a group of young activists planning an armed attack against some rich people in a secluded mansion in the country. Was it based on any real-life events?

It comes from my own political beliefs and the desire to balance our anger against the world and desires to maintain what’s decent and livable in society. I have two kids myself, so in a way, it’s very personal to me. I tried to also explore my contradictions and intimate paradoxes.

Death Does Not Exist is produced by Embuscade, a studio you co-founded with your brother Nicolas in Montreal, and Miyu in France. Can you tell us some more about the production details?

Yes, exactly, my brother Nicolas and I founded Embuscade Films 12 years ago, and we did a couple of features and a couple of shorts. Death Does Not Exist is our biggest project to date. We animated about 80% of it in our studio in Montreal with a team of 27 people, and 20% of the animation was done in France by 15 other artists at Miyu. Later, we used TVPaint, 12 frames per second. Everything was painted on paper in the beginning and then assembled with After Effects.

My brother Nicolas is the film’s producer, and my other brother (Jean L’Appeau) composed the music. I come from a Quebec-based tradition of handmade short films, following the line of work done by the National Film Board of Canada. I like to explore the same kind of auteur independence and artistry in a longer format.

The film has a very selective color palette of greens, oranges and muted yellows, which accentuates its tense moments. Can you talk about the visual style?

The whole movie is structured within an abstract field of colors. I decided early on not to always distinguish the character from the backgrounds, so if there’s a dynamic relationship within the two, it’s movement, the framing or their actions that makes them visible. At the same time, characters are part of their backgrounds, and the setting is also emerging from the interior world of the characters. The abstraction reflects the radical nature of the characters and their beliefs.

I’m first and foremost an animation filmmaker. As I write the script, I am always thinking about the ways I can translate it to animation. I break away from the strict, natural format of the script to include some visual elements that will be animated. That’s one of the reasons I love it. It’s a very demanding but powerful medium. I’m also a big fan of painting, so I’m also including my love for shapes and colors in the animated form.

What were the toughest aspects of the movie to produce?

The compositing was quite hard, because we had a very challenging forest. I took a lot of liberty in writing this script, and there were a lot of ambitious and long camera moves. When you produce animation, everything that moves becomes expensive, so those long tracking shots in the forest were difficult to composite. The other demanding part was the coloring because it wasn’t a rational process. The colors, the backgrounds were all done intuitively. I tried to pick a certain palette for each sequence and maintain the tension with abstraction but keep the viewer engaged.

What was your budget for the film?

It was about 2.8 million dollars, and we really put everything on the screen! Of course, funding it wasn’t easy, because it’s a difficult film and tough topic to believe in at first. But I feel very lucky that we had such a great team and we were able to finish it.

Can you elaborate on the enigmatic title of your movie?

The key paradox is that yes, death does exist. But it’s an incantation: It’s something they want to believe, just like their other strong beliefs. But the truth catches up. You may think that death doesn’t exist for you or for the others who will suffer from the violence you put in the world, but at the end, it does exist for everyone.

Did you realize that you wanted to work in animation at a young age?

As a teenager, I fell in love with cinema. My friend and I would always rent movies on VHS! But I think I was too quiet for the live-action sound and fury. I stumbled upon Jan Švankmajer’s work on DVD, and it changed my world. It was such a powerful work of art made by one person under a camera. That led me to the world of animation. Another big influence is Gianluigi Toccafondo (La Piccola Russia), and I absolutely love Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis’ When the Day Breaks. In general, I am very much influenced by the experimental shorts that were produced by the National Film Board of Canada.

What do you think of today’s global animation scene?

I do think that animation is very relevant in our world. There are lots of animation being made around the world, and many stories are being told that couldn’t be possible without this art form. I’m very happy about the success of Flow. I think there’s such an honesty about the filmmaking process. It’s truly joyous to see it succeed, and I’m very hopeful that there will be an even wider audience for adult animation.

Do you have any pieces of advice for young animation artists?

The key is honesty and perseverance. There are a lot of people who are trying to do what they think people will like. But I think it’s important to be strictly honest with yourself and with the people you work with, as well as the ideas you’re dealing with. In my past personal experiences, that has been a good path to follow.

Finally, what kind of impact do you hope your movie will have on audiences?

I hope it leaves them with a mixture of both light and dark emotions: On one hand, there’s anger, unfulfilled desire and the challenge of life, but the movie also underlines the importance of friendship and the responsibility of maintaining a decent and livable society, as well as the importance of love and connections that make us free.

Death Does Not Exist is one of the films selected for the official competition at Annecy Festival this year.