The Cartoon d’Or evening is
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A Mouse's Tale
Directed by: Benjamin Renner
France, 2007, 4’ 09’’
Original title: “La queue de la souris”
Drawings and cut-out animation
Prod.: La Poudrière, école du film d’animation
In the forest, a lion captures a mouse and is about to devour it when the mouse proposes a deal…
Benjamin Renner
After his A-levels, Benjamin Renner followed a foundation course for art schools before joining the Fine Arts School of Angoulême where he got his National Diploma in Graphic Novel. During the two years he spent at La Poudrière, an animation film-directing school in France, he directed “Le corbeau voulant imiter l’aigle” (one-minute film), “Le plus gros président du monde” (a commissioned film for Canal J Television channel) and “La queue de la souris “ (“A Mouse’s Tale”), his graduation film.
Benjamin, 24 years old, is now working at Les Armateurs as Lead Animator on the feature adaptation of “Ernest et Célestine”.
« I wanted to tell a short, simple story, a tale about a lion and a mouse, an encounter between a tiny harmless creature and an enormous one. It was important in the film that the setting helped to transform the viewers into a little mouse, to throw them into a dark and strange forest, a large black mass, a world where appearances are deceiving, where by simply adding an eye to a mountain it becomes an terrifying lion.
By using silhouette animation, I had a large degree of freedom for the setting. I was not constrained by technical difficulties and was able to concentrate on the story.
Finally, what was most important for me was to be able to tell a fable like the ones I heard as a child and which have stayed in my mind without me really knowing why. »