Dilili in Paris (“Dilili à Paris”), by Michel Ocelot

Michel Ocelot grew up between Guinea and Angers, where he studied Fine Arts before enrolling at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and then the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, USA.

Interested in animated cinema, he began his career by making short films which won him a  British Academy of the Arts of Television and Cinema Award (BAFTA) for The Three Inventors (“Les Trois Inventeurs”) (1980) and a César for his film The Legend of the Poor Hunchback (“La Légende du pauvre bossu") (1982).

The filmmaker made his mark in the late 1990s with Kirikou and the Sorceress (“Kirikou et la sorcière”) (1998), which won an award at the Annecy International Film Festival. Beloved by a million viewers in France and around the world, this film contributed to the development of the animation industry in France. Michel Ocelot went on to continue his career in animation with the films Princes and Princesses (“Princes et Princesses") (2000), Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest (“Azur et Asmar”) (2006), and his latest film, Dilili in Paris (2018).

For his seventh film, Michel Ocelot immerses us in Belle Époque Paris. A young Kanak girl, Dilili, meets Orel, a delivery boy who will introduce her to the capital and its legendary sites on his delivery tricycle.

Adorable and polite, Dilili marvels at the famous women who face up to the patriarchy: from Sarah Bernhardt to Marie Curie, Louise Michel and Colette. But dark forces have their eye on this Enlightenment civilisation. A mysterious sect led by the Mâles-Maîtres kidnaps little girls and terrorises the city. Especially alert to injustices given that she herself has been the victim of racism, Dilili decides to investigate and find the perpetrators.

Having set his story in the early twentieth century, for the first time Michel Ocelot sought to immerse himself in the Belle Époque Paris. While the film uses 3D and 2D animation to create these characters, drawn using bold blocks of colour, the director created the backgrounds from photos of Paris which he took over 4 years.

Inspired by Jules Vernes’ and Victor Hugo's descriptions of Paris, the filmmaker had to remove all traces of our modern daily lives, such as means of transport and bins, in order to achieve a faithful reconstruction. To limit the invasive elements that would have to be erased, the director photographed the almost-empty capital early in the morning.

Screened in 2018 for the first time at the Annecy International Festival of Animated Film, Dilili in Paris was awarded the César for Best Animated Film the following year. A success which even led Dilili's character to be named a "UNICEF Spokesperson" by the institution, carrying the message of her struggle for girls' empowerment and gender equality.

Positive and universal, the film continues to travel the world and will soon be released in Japan and Brazil.