Coming-Soon "Young Perez"

There are times and places that resist the “objectivity” of the actual photographic record, and I believe the experience of drawing, of painting alone, can render what can only be imagined” Franck Van Leeuwen states. “Young Perez” is a biopic in a combination of modern techniques and its possibilties to create a graphical universe that bolsters the psychology and story of the protagonists. The way Victor Perez sees the world evolves over the course of his short life. The visual approach of the film reflects this singular transformation. From the white city of childhood with its benevolent blue skies to a dark industrialised Paris in mid-tones and a heavy Berlin of 1938 where, the day after Kristallnacht, reality submerges him and changes his view definitively. Light becomes heavy and muted then.
“Young Perez” tells the tragic fate of Victor Perez, a Jewish kid from the ghetto who won the world championship boxing in 1931, at the age of thirteen. It also tells the love story of two kids, Young Perez and Monette, and spans a period of more than two decades following the protagonists to Paris, Marseille, Tunis, Berlin and Auschwitz in the end. Zippy Frames stated: ‘Another daring animated project in development’. And sure enough it already got a Special Mention at the Carrefour de la Création du MIFA Annecy in 2011. The film is directed by Jean-Jacques Kahn & Franck Van Leeuwen. Franck Van Leeuwen is a Swiss resident born in Paris. He also works on an adaptation of Melville’s literary classic novel Moby Dick, again with Jean-Jacques Kahn and in co-direction with Zoltan Horvath, produced by Geneva based studio Nadasdy Film. (evd)