‘The world was hard – this movie was meant to be a hug’: Ugo Bienvenu on his heartwarming eco-fable Arco
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<p>The polymath French film-maker might be a pessimist, but his Oscar-nominated animated film is one of light and hope – even if he did have to fund it himself</p><p>There are grey clouds over Los Angeles, and the sky is spitting. “It never rains in LA,” says Ugo Bienvenu. “But every time I come here, it rains.” For the past eight months, the French animator has been on the campaign trail, in LA and elsewhere, with Arco, which was nominated for best animated feature at the Osca
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‘The world was hard – this movie was meant to be a hug’: Ugo Bienvenu on his heartwarming eco-fable Arco The polymath French film-maker might be a pessimist, but his Oscar-nominated animated film is one of light and hope – even if he did have to fund it himself T here are grey clouds over Los Angeles, and the sky is spitting. “It never rains in LA,” says Ugo Bienvenu. “But every time I come here, it rains.” For the past eight months, the French animator has been on the campaign trail, in LA and elsewhere, with Arco, which was nominated for best animated feature at the Oscars on Sunday. It’s a gorgeous family animation, combining ET’s big heart with the artistry of Studio Ghibli. But travelling has meant being absent for long stretches from his home in Paris, where he lives with his wife and two small children. This trip, Bienvenu’s family has flown out to LA with him for the first time, which explains why he’s speaking to me over a video call from a drizzly garden. “I’m outside, so they can make noise,” he says, lighting a cigarette. As he paces, I catch a glimpse through the patio doors of his four-year-old daughter kneeling at the coffee table, colouring. We’re speaking a couple of weeks before the Oscars. In the end, his little indie couldn’t halt the category juggernaut KPop Demon Hunters – but that doesn’t take away from the fact that Arco is a little wonder of a film, with a hopeful vision of a better, kinder future. I ask Bienvenu if he is an optimist by nature. He shakes his head. “No! I am a super pessimistic guy.” But when he started writing a family film he was already thinking about having children. “I didn’t want my kids in 10 or 15 years to look at my work and say, ‘Oh, Papa was so cynical.’ I wanted them to feel as if I tried to build something, to bring light, to bring hope.” It was 2019 when he embarked on the script with co-writer Félix de Givry. The world already looked bleak, he tells me. “It felt like we were living in a really bad science ficti...
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