Canada’s Breadwinner gets nod for animation

TORONTO — The Canadian team behind the animated film The Breadwinner hopes Monday’s Golden Globe nomination will shine a light on its timely subject matter and promote empathy.

The film stars the voice of Toronto actor Saara Chaudry as 11-year-old Parvana, who disguises herself as a boy in order to support her family while her father is wrongfully imprisoned by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.

The film is a Canadian co-production and has a homegrown cast, about half of whom are Muslim and have Afghan heritage. Oscar-winning actor-director Angelina Jolie is an executive producer.

“Everyone keeps saying that this is a film that’s come out at the right time because of what’s going on, especially in the States, the Muslim ban, and I think this is a film that can actually help shed a light on what’s going on around the world that we’re not normally used to — especially that’s a film for kids,” Andrew Rosen, a Toronto producer on the film, said in a phone interview after the Golden Globe nominations were announced.

“We’ve had a lot of kids watch this and ask their parents and ask at Q-and-A’s: ‘Is this real’ or ‘Did this happen 100 years ago?’

“And we have to say: ‘No, this is happening now.’ I think it’s really helpful when families go see it, for families to actually have this conversation with their kids.”

The Breadwinner, which was nominated for best animated film, is adapted from Canadian author Deborah Ellis’s children’s novel.

The book is based on the testimony of Afghan women she spoke with in refugee camps in Pakistan.

Irish animator Nora Twomey directed, while acclaimed Canadian composers Jeff Danna and Mychael Danna did the score for the film, which is open in several cities in Canada and the U.S.

Rosen and his Aircraft Pictures partner Anthony Leo have been working on the project since 2009.

The other co-producing countries are Ireland and Luxembourg.

“It’s a film that shows the effects of war on ordinary people and we don’t see that nearly enough, and I think it will help inform our decisions about whether or not we allow our governments to go to war,” Ellis said Monday from her home in Simcoe, Ont.

“Do we really want to keep doing this to other people, people who we would probably be friends with if we got to meet them in ordinary time?

“So I think the film is going to contribute to those kinds of discussions and that’s wonderful, because the people who are seeing it now, the young people who are seeing it now, are maybe going to have that stuff imprinted in them — and when they become decision-makers, they might hesitate a little bit before killing people in other countries.”

The Golden Globes will be broadcast by NBC from the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills.