Among the feature debut projects selected at the latest session of the CNC’s advance on receipts committee, Momoko Seto’s Planet stands out. The Japanese filmmaker, who has been living in France since her studies (at the Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains) and makes films at the CNRS (French National Centre for Scientific Research), will be working along the lines of her numerous short films screened in many international festivals, such as PLANET ∑ (revealed in competition at the Berlinale in 2015 and winner of the Audi prize) and PLANET ∞ (presented in Locarno in 2017, in the Virtual Reality section).

Creating very singular, poetic worlds using elements from everyday life, in particular by looking at the small scale world of plants and animals, Momoko Seto will bring together in Planet the 3D animation of the Pixar kind and real-life footage. The image of the film will be made up of natural elements filmed with different techniques (timelapse, extreme slow-motion with High Speed Camera, macro photography, electronic fibre photography), but everything will be modified and reworked in post-production. Only the achenes, the main characters, will be created in 3D with a modelisation that will push the realism to the maximum and will be created from macro images captured in slow-motion. The movements will then be animated in post-production, like they are in 3D animated films.

Written by the director together with Alain Layrac, in collaboration with Mariette Désert and with the scientific advice of Frédérique Aït-Touati (CNRS) and Claudine Cohen (study director at EPHE and at EHESS), the script tells the misadventures of four dandelion seeds (or achenes) who escape in extremis from the destruction of their field by a nuclear explosion. After floating through space and crossing paths with a starfish, they land on a new planet and search for a place to take root. These four atypical migrants embark on an odyssey that will take them from a frozen land to a plant world populated with dangerous insects and an ocean where potato islands drift. Finally, they will cross a post-apocalyptic desert illuminated by three moons, and thanks to the friendship of a small, orphaned slug, the achenes will finally find a new home.

The production of Planet is handled by Emmanuel Chaumet for Ecce Films. For the record, the Parisian company has just begun filming After Blue [+lee también:
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entrevista: Bertrand Mandico
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ficha de la película] from the duo Jonathan Vinel - Caroline Poggi, All About Yves [+lee también:
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entrevista: Benoît Forgeard
ficha de la película] by Benoît Forgeard, Mens [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Isabelle Prim, Blondes Animals [+lee también:
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entrevista: Maxime Matray, Alexia Walt…
ficha de la película] by Maxime Matray and Alexia Walther, In Bed with Victoria [+lee también:
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entrevista: Justine Triet
ficha de la película] and Age of Panic [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Justine Triet, and The Rendez-Vous of Déjà-Vu [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Antonin Peretjatko, as well as the co-production Rojo [+lee también:
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entrevista: Benjamín Naishtat
ficha de la película] by Benjamin Naishtat. Standing out in post-production is Just Like a Woman [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] by Amro Hamzawi.