The Illusionist
L'illusionniste

France, 2010, 80 Minute Running Time
Genre/Subjects: Animation, Drama

MUST END March 10 at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax
35mm Presentation - The Illusionist, an Academy Award nominee for Best Animated Feature, is a story about two paths that cross. An outdated, aging magician, forced to wander from country to country, city to city and station to station in search of a stage to perform his act meets a young girl at the start of her life's journey. Alice is a teenage girl with all her capacity for childish wonder still intact. She plays at being a woman without realizing the day to stop pretending is fast approaching. She doesn’t know yet that she loves The Illusionist like she would a father; he already knows that he loves her as he would a daughter. Their destinies will collide, but nothing—not even magic or the power of illusion—can stop the voyage of discovery. A script for The Illusionist was originally written by French comedy genius and cinema legend Jacques Tati as a love letter from a father to his daughter, but never produced. Sylvain Chomet, the Oscar-nominated and critically acclaimed creator of The Triplets of Belleville, adapted the script and brought it to life in his distinctive hand-drawn animated style.

DIRECTOR: Sylvain Chomet
Principal Cast: Voices of Jean-Claude Donda, Eilidh Rankin, Jil Aigrot, Didier Gustin