DUTCH COURAGE
WHERE IS ANNE FRANK Ari Folman puts an animated spin on a true story of bravery…
When Israeli director Ari Folman (Waltz With Bashir, The Congress) was approached by the Anne Frank Foundation about making an animated film, he was “totally resistant” to the idea. “I didn’t think I would have anything new to say,” he says of the diary-writing Dutch girl who hid with her family from the Nazis in their home for two years during World War 2. “I thought it’s a mistake even doing it.”
Then he re-read Frank’s famous chronicle and spoke to his own mother. “She’s a Holocaust survivor. And she told me, ‘Yeah, do whatever you want. But if you don’t do it, I will die tomorrow.’ So I took it.” While Frank’s wartime account has been adapted before, for George Stevens’ 1959 Oscar-winner The Diary Of Anne Frank, Folman’s fable-like approach is markedly different.
Set “a year from now”, Kitty, the imaginary girl captured in Frank’s diaries, comes alive. Voiced by Ruby Stokes, she can’t be seen by the throngs of tourists that now visit the Anne Frank Museum – the very building where the family once took shelter – but she gradually comes to understand her creator. “Kitty… she’s the alter ego of Anne,” says Folman. “Because she’s everything Anne wished she would be. And she’s wild in a way Anne couldn’t be. She’s vivid, she’s rude and she’s very persistent!”
With the magical story interweaving with Anne’s own experiences, Folman drew from many sources, including his own mother when it came to the SS guards. “We couldn’t figure out how to do it. We were stuck for months. And then I called my mother and asked her, ‘When you were a teenager in the camps, how did you see the Nazis?’ She said, ‘I thought they were gods. They had perfect proportions, everything we did not have.’” The result? Largerthan-life phantom-like figures.
Working with Yoni Goodman, his animation director from 2008’s war dram-doc Waltz With Bashir, Folman admits it’s been a struggle, despite a budget of €20m and a 400-strong crew. “I think doing animation is masochistic. I truly believe that. On one hand it’s addictive. But animation is hell – the making of it. It’s tough.” Especially during Covid, with animation companies in 12 different countries, including Martinique. “We found three animators on the beach!”
Yet Folman managed to sneak his sense of humour into the film. Among the tourists glimpsed in Anne Frank’s house are animated versions of Tom Cruise in his Top Gun guise and singer Justin Bieber. “When he visited the Anne Frank house, four or five years ago, he mentioned that if she was alive today, she would have been a big fan of his!” Who would Belieb that?
‘I think doing animation is masochistic. I truly believe that’
ARI FOLMAN
WHERE IS ANNE FRANK OPENS IN CINEMAS ON 12 AUGUST.