A new animated movie adaptation of the Joseph Conrad classic Heart of Darkness is back on track, with the news that Polish studio BreakThru Films is on board as co-producer. The Polish studio earned a global reputation for its hand-painted 2017 feature film Loving Vincent, about the last days of troubled genius Vincent Van Gogh. Loving Vincent won the European Film Award for animated feature and the Annecy Audience Award, as well as earning nominations from the Oscars, Golden Globes and BAFTAs.
First announced in 2019, Heart of Darkness is being directed by Welsh BAFTA-winning filmmaker Gerald Conn (The Comet’s Tale, Inner Polar Bear), and employs his specialty technique of sand-on-glass animation — this production is billed as the first feature-length sand animation. BreakThru’s expertise with managing intensive hand-crafted productions such as Loving Vincent and their even more ambitious 2023 painted feature The Peasants, makes them “the perfect creative partner,” according to Conn.
Conn will be presenting Heart of Darkness at the London Screenings.
Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was originally serialized in three parts in 1899. The brooding exploration of human nature set against the cruelty and exploitation of European colonialism in Africa was adapted for the screen by Mark Jenkins and Mary Kat O Flanagan.
From Conn’s Gritty Realism / Gritty Films:
Marlow, an idealistic seaman, captains a leaky steamboat up the River Congo in search of a mysterious figure named Kurtz who has carved out a brutal kingdom in which he has power of life and death over his native subjects. Kurtz appears to have lost his mind and reverted back to a primitive state. Marlow and his crew brave hostile tribes, disease and death in their dangerous quest to rescue Kurtz and escape back home with their lives.
As previously announced, Michael Sheen will voice Kurtz, with Grantchester‘s James Norton as Marlow and Bill Nighy as “The Manager.”
[Source: Variety]
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