Published: 7 June 2022
Last updated: 4 March 2024
MIRIAM HECHTMAN: Oscar-nominated Israeli director ARI FOLMAN nearly refused when asked to create animated Anne, fearing she was "too iconic”. His new film will show at Sydney Film Festival
Ari Folman says his new film, Where is Anne Frank, is really asking, “Where is her legacy?”
The film recreates Anne and her imaginary friend Kitty, whom she addresses in her diary. Kitty becomes witness to the Frank family’s last months in the Holocaust and to Europe after World War Two.
“Kitty is the bridge to the modern world,” Folman says. Through Kitty’s interactions the film explores current themes such as the refugee crisis and social activism, although Folman is quick to add that some things cannot be compared.
“One and a half million Jewish children were killed in the Holocaust. They didn’t even have a chance to become refugees. The people in the movie have a chance to live and they have people that are fighting for their freedom. There can’t be any comparison.”
When, in 2013, the Anne Frank Foundation in Basel approached Folman to make the film, he was reluctant.
“I thought she was too iconic, and I had nothing new to say, but then they gave me some time.”
Folman, whose own children were teenagers at the time, read the diary several times and found it “really stunning, an unbelievable piece of writing for a 13-year-old girl”.
He agreed to make the film on the condition it would be animated. He says audiences tolerate a depth of emotion in animation that they might not manage in a live action film.
Waltz with Bashir, the adult animated war documentary written, produced, and directed by Folman, and based on his experiences in the 1982 Lebanon War, is now used to treat soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. Folman says the patients can relate to the drawings in a way they could not if real actors were involved.
Folman spent eight years working on the animated movie, which was in the 2021 Cannes Film Festival official selection and will be shown at this month’s Sydney Film Festival.
He did extensive research, including investigating the last seven months of Anne’s life, archives of family pictures, her unpublished short stories, and all versions of the diaries, which had been censored by her father, Otto.
The idea of Kitty as the narrative’s protagonist evolved slowly. “I was looking for a new dimension, for an original way to tell the story and it took me a long time,” Folman says, “but I knew intuitively that the solution was in the diary. If I dig enough in the diary, I will find the solution.”
Finally, after repeated readings, he focused on the page where Anne describes her imaginary friend: “I thought this can really be a manual for a designer on how to create Kitty.” His only addition was that Kitty would have red hair.
Illustrator Lena Guberman created Kitty and when Folman saw her on the computer screen, he knew she would to be the protagonist of the film.
Ruby Stokes, who played Francesca Bridgerton in the hit series Bridgerton, is the voice of Kitty.
“Kitty is mainly an alter ego of Anne; she created her so she would be everything Anne wouldn’t be during the war,” Folman says. “So, they had to have some similarities, the two girls. She had to have a lot of spark, [be] vivid, have a strong stamina because she’s a fighter and she becomes an activist.
Folman also drew on his own family. “She’s very much based on my younger daughter - her temperament, her character and everything is very much her, so of course I’m connected to her.”
Folman has another strong connection to the film which he notes in his dedication in the credits: his parents, arrived in Auschwitz the same week as the Frank family.
“I don’t know if it’s that significant, but it glues you because my mother is still with us, thank God, and she’s older than Anne Frank by six years. Maybe they met. Maybe. It’s unbelievable. So much a part of my life.”
Where is Anne Frank is showing at the Sydney Film Festival on 12, 16 & 19 June.
Photo: Still from the film, featuring Anne and Kitty (Sydney Film Festival)
