The Lion and the Three Thieves: A delightful musical tale at the cinema from the age of 3

Recommended from 3 years

Once: Welcome to Cardamom, the most peaceful town! A baker makes rolls, a shoemaker makes shoes, and the weather forecast always predicts good weather: nothing can disturb the inhabitants. nothing you say Not to mention three hilarious bastards named Casper, Jasper and Jonathan, who have taken it into their heads to come to town… and watch out, they have a lion!

What they love: After the Great Cheese Race and a trip to the moon, director Rasmus A. Sivertsen returned with the animated film The Lion and the Three Bandits. This moral tale is adapted from Norwegian children’s author Torbjörn Egner. “Cardamom dwellers and thievesThe plays and songs he wrote are an integral part of Norwegian childhood.

Thorbjorn Egner was inspired by a trip to Morocco in the 1940s for this work. The illustrator imagined the city of Cardamom from sketches drawn by a family in the Moroccan fortified city of Essaouira.

This uniquely styled musical is a beautiful tale of community living and bonding. The inhabitants of Cardamom live harmoniously in this city where life is good. Three robbers live outside society and survive by stealing, but they want to integrate with the population. During their adventures, Jasper, Casper and Jonathan learn to integrate and discover themselves.

The director explains that he developed a completely new technique for his feature film. Planned in Stop-Motion, The Lion and the Three Thieves is finally an innovative combination of sets with volume and CGI characters. This is the first feature film to use this technique.

Rasmus A. Sivertsen states in the film’s press release: “We originally planned to make a stop-motion film, but the pandemic made it impossible. So we spent a year shooting all the backgrounds of the film, with a reduced crew, in full lock-down, then we created the digital characters and brought them together and brought them to life in the TV series. All together, after some particularly careful post-production, the stop-motion illusion is almost complete!

It was a very difficult process to design, test and validate, but it paid off in the end. This made it possible to expand the range of emotions and facial expressions that cannot be achieved with traditional stop motion.“

Indeed, the characters of the feature film and especially the animals (lion, dog, camel and parrot) are very expressive, the invented technique is a real plus to animate the characters and make the eyes soft and bright.

What might be bothering them: No scary scenes, except maybe the fire scene, which might disturb the little ones. But the style of the film makes the animation softer, and the kids will quickly relax thanks to the heroic intervention of the 3 bandits.

What will they keep inside: Like the original work, the film makes people think about life in society and encourages the audience to question the perception of others. Should the sheriff be so kind? Is Aunt Sophie really so rigid and suspicious? Can we force others to change? Should we include those who do not respect social rules?

So many questions that allow young viewers to understand that we shouldn’t force others to be what they’re not or do what they don’t want to do.