Ten years is a long time to carry a story. Ervin Han, co-founder of Singapore’s Robot Playground Media, had been living with “The Violinist” for most of that stretch before it finally screened in competition at the Annecy Animation Festival this year – and walked away with the Cristal for best feature and the SACEM Award for best original soundtrack. He is still finding the words for it.
“We’ve lived with this film for almost ten years, and along the way there were many moments when simply finishing it felt like the biggest challenge,” Han tells Variety. “To receive the Cristal is an extraordinary honor, but more than anything, I’m delighted for the hundreds of artists, animators, musicians and filmmakers who gave so much of themselves to this film. This recognition belongs to all of them.”
The film spans eight decades of Singapore’s history, following two childhood friends – gifted violinists Fei and Kai – whose lives are severed by the Japanese occupation of the 1940s. Framed by the investigation of a Spanish journalist who seeks to uncover the story behind an aging violin legend, the narrative moves across the decades as Fei rises to become a celebrated musician, though the instrument she plays and the music she performs carry a weight she cannot set down. Also woven into the story is Lim Bo Seng, the real-life resistance leader who serves as a mentor figure to Kai, and Takeshi Inoue, a Japanese officer drawn with deliberate moral complexity.
