The BoxTrolls Premiere

Fantoche has good cause to be proud. Straight after the Venice Film Festival, the festival in Baden will be exclusively holding Switzerland’s first screening of the latest sensation from Laika, the makers of ParaNorman, Coraline, etc. The new film from the Portland-based studios tells the story of the adorable BoxTrolls who live underground and who only venture up to the surface at night. In addition, Mark Shapiro will be taking us behind the scenes of the film in a “Making of” presentation at Fantoche.

Cheesebridge, a small, well-to-do Victorian town, where the residents are class-conscious and adore cheese, is plagued every night by abominable monsters that clamber up out of the sewers and steal the things that the locals hold most dear, their children and their cheese. Or so at least the townsfolk have always believed. In reality, the BoxTrolls are a community of eccentric, good-natured creatures who use old cardboard boxes as clothes and as camouflage and who enjoy making amusing odds and ends out of junk. They raise an orphan boy called Eggs with great care in their underground caves and keep clear of the townsfolk. When the local villain Archibald Snatcher (voiced in the original by Ben Kingsley) sets about exterminating the BoxTrolls in an attempt to climb the social ladder through this supposedly kind deed, Eggs summons up all his courage and ventures to the surface to defend his troll family. Together with the quick-witted girl Winnifred, he bridges the gap between the two worlds and devises a daredevil plan to defeat Archibald. “The BoxTrolls” is a very lovingly and elaborately designed 3-D stop-motion animation from Laika (ParaNorman, Coraline, etc.) and, packed with funny features and careful attention to detail, excels through the facial expressions and gestures of the characters and through the settings. In addition to the gripping crime narrative, the entertaining tale at the heart of it is a timeless tale of philanthropy. This gem of a movie for all the family will bring the curtain down on the Festival as a special screening on closing night. 

Making-of The BoxTrolls

The animation specialists at Laika Studios have created a new masterpiece with The BoxTrolls, combining traditional stop-motion with the very latest animation techniques. Mark Shapiro provides an insight into the incredibly painstaking production of “The BoxTrolls”, where every finger and every eyebrow of all of the puppets have to been moved in minute detail, millimetre by millimetre – 24 times a second. Fantoche is proud to attract one of North America’s brilliant animators to Baden.