05/02/2024 - The Spanish-Chinese co-production directed by Salvador Simó and Li Jianping will open the Spanish festival, competing for its Golden Biznaga

The animated family film Dragonkeeper [+see also:
trailer
interview: Salvador Simó
film profile] has been chosen by Malaga Film Festival to open its 27th edition, which will be held between 1 and 10 March. This Spanish-Chinese co-production of adventure and fantasy, directed by Salvador Simó and Li Jianping, is included in the official section.

It is an adventure and fantasy feature film written by Carole Wilkinson, Pablo Castrillo, Ignacio Ferreras, Rosanna Checchini and Wang Xianping, and based on the first of six novels of Wilkinson's literary saga of the same name. It tells of dark times in imperial China where dragons, once the friends and wise allies of men, have been hunted for years and locked in dungeons. In a remote mountain fortress, a young girl helps the last of the dragons escape and joins him on a mission to recover the most precious treasure: the last dragon egg, stolen by an evil sorcerer who wants to exploit its magical potential to achieve immortality.

Salvador Simó returns to the Malaga Film Festival with this project. He previously participated five years ago with Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: GoCritic! Interview: José L…
film profile], an animated and cinephile feature film that won the Silver Biznaga Award for Best Music, composed by Arturo Cardelús (also responsible for the Dragonkeeper soundtrack), the Feroz Dark Door Award for Best Feature Film in the Official Selection and the Asecan Debut Film Award. It also received four Goya Award nominations, including Best Animated Film; Best Animated Film at the 2019 European Film Awards; Jury Mention and Best Soundtrack at the Annecy Film Festival of the same year; and was nominated for Best Independent Film at the Annie Awards. The Barcelona-born filmmaker has also directed television projects and worked in the VFX departments of the American films The Jungle Book and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.

Li Jianping is a professor at the Beijing Film Academy and dean of the Animation School. He worked as an animation director at China Central Television from 1988 to 2007, is Secretary General of the Animation Arts Committee of the China Artists Association and Deputy Secretary General of the China Animation Association, as well as President of the Beijing Film Animation Association.

Dragonkeeper is produced by Guardián de Dragones AIE and China Film Animation Ltd, in collaboration with Atresmedia Cine and Movistar Plus+. It is supported by the programme Creative Europe MEDIA and the Film and Audiovisual Arts Institute (ICAA). It will be exported by the British agency SC Films International and will be released in Spanish cinemas on 19 April, distributed by A Contracorriente Films.

(Translated from Spanish by Vicky York)