Author diverts credit for Breadwinner film’s praise
Canadian author Deborah Ellis is thrilled that the big-screen adaptation of her young adult novel The Breadwinner is generating major awards buzz. But she is quick to divert credit to the film’s director and creative team.
Director Nora Twomey and her team of animators “deserve all the praise that they’re getting” for the film’s success, Ellis said on the phone from her home in Simcoe, Ont., on Tuesday.
“They were very sincere about the project and they have been very careful to be as authentic in the film as they possibly can,” Ellis said. “It’s just really a phenomenal piece of work that they’ve created.”
First published in 2000, The Breadwinner tells the story of Parvana, an 11-year-old Afghan girl living under Taliban rule. She dresses up as a boy to help provide for her family while her father is wrongfully imprisoned by the Taliban.
The movie, a Canada-Ireland-Luxembourg co-production, premièred at the Toronto International Film Festival in September and counts Angelina Jolie among its executive producers.
This week, it was nominated for 10 Annie Awards, which celebrate animated work, including best independent animated feature. The Breadwinner trails only Pixar’s Coco, which has 13 nominations.
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association picked The Breadwinner over Coco for its best animation award. The Breadwinner is one of 26 movies that have been submitted for consideration in the animated feature film category for the 90th Academy Awards.
Ellis said she was “pretty excited, of course” when the movie rights for her story were sold, but “it was hard to know for sure. Sometimes these things start and then they can’t get off the ground. But these folks were very tenacious.”
Ellis first saw the completed movie in August at a screening for the cast and crew, an experience she said was “fantastic.”
She remembered being struck by the number of people in the room who had all contributed to putting the story she wrote onto the big screen.
“One of the things that was most moving was to look up at the seats in the theatre and know that they were all filled with people who had been part of this project and contributed their time and thought and heart and soul,” she said. “That really blew me away.”
As a writer for young audiences, Ellis said she’s used to seeing readers interact with her work directly, an experience many writers don’t share.
“I go into a lot of schools,” she said. “My books have always felt like they were community events, because I’m in there and the kids are talking about them.
“What’s changed, I think, is now it’s more of a wider audience, and a different audience. Parents will take their kids to see the movie, and talk about it afterwards. It just adds a whole other layer of discussion.”
Ellis thinks The Breadwinner’s story might resonate more now than when her book was released because conditions in Afghanistan have become more widely understood.
“It’s been much more of a public discussion about what’s going on there than there was when the book first came out,” she said.
The Breadwinner goes on wide release on Dec. 15.