Kirikou and the Sorceress (, ) is a 1998 French-language animated adventure fantasy film written and directed by Michel Ocelot. Drawn from elements of West African folk tales, it depicts how a newborn boy, Kirikou, saves his village from the evil witch Karaba. The film was originally released on 9 December 1998."". www.bcdb.com, 13 October 2012 It is a co-production between companies in France (Exposure, France 3 Cinéma, Les Armateurs, Monipoly, Odec Kid Cartoons), Belgium (Radio-Télévision Belge) and Luxembourg (Studio O, Trans Europe Film) and animated at Rija Films' studio in Latvia and Studio Exist in Hungary.
Kirikou and the Sorceress was a major commercial and critical success in France, becoming a modern classic of French animation. Its success led to a sequel, Kirikou et les bêtes sauvages, released in 2005, and a stage musical adaptation, Kirikou et Karaba, first performed in 2007. Another follow-up, Kirikou et les hommes et les femmes, was released in late 2012.
Plot In a little West African village, an unusual boy named Kirikou is born, who can speak before birth and walk immediately after birth. After Kirikou's mother tells him that an evil sorceress, Karaba, has dried up their spring and eaten all the men of the village except for one, he decides to accompany the last warrior, his uncle, to visit her and try to stop her.
Kirikou manages to trick the sorceress and save his uncle by waiting inside his uncle's hat and pretending that it is magic. Additionally, he saves the village's children from being kidnapped both by the sorceress's boat and tree, and kills the monster who was drinking all the village's water, gaining trust and stature in the eyes of the previously skeptical villagers. With the help of his mother and various animals, Kirikou then evades Karaba's watchmen and travels into a forbidden mountain to ask his wise old grandfather about the sorceress.
His grandfather tells him that she is evil because she suffers from a poisoned thorn in her back, which causes her great pain and also gives her great power. After learning this, Kirikou manages to take the sorceress's stolen gold, thus luring her outside to where he can trick her and extract the poisoned thorn. As a result, the sorceress is cured of her suffering, and she kisses Kirikou, who then becomes an adult.
When Kirikou and Karaba arrive back at the village, no one believes that the sorceress is cured until a procession of drummers arrive with Kirikou's grandfather. The drummers turn out to be the sorceress's watchmen and henchmen restored to their original human forms, the missing men of the village, whom she hadn't eaten after all.
Cast
French voice cast
Doudou Gueye Thiaw: Child Kirikou Awa Sene Sarr: Karaba Maimouna N'Diaye: Kirikou's mother Robert Liensol: Kirikou's grandfather William Nadylam: Adult Kirikou Sébastien Hébrant: Adult Kirikou Rémi Bichet: Adult Kirikou Thilombo Lubambu: Kirikou's uncle Marie Augustine Diatta: the force woman Moustafa Diop: the fetish on the roof Isseu Niang: the small woman Selly Raby Kane: Zoé, the big girl Erick Patrick Correa: Boris, the big boy Adjoua Barry: Boulette, a girl
Charles Edouard Gomis Correa: a boy Marie-Louise Shedeye Diiddi: the little girl Abdoulayé Diop Yama: the old person Josephine Theodora M'Boup: a woman Tabata N'Diaye: the old woman Samba Wane: fetish talked
Aminatha N'Diaye: a mother François Chicaïa: man of the village N'Deyé Aïta N'Diaye: woman of the village Abdou El Aziz Gueye: man of the village Boury Kandé: woman of the village Assy Dieng Bâ: Karaba's scream Michel Elias: animal sounds
English voice cast
Theodore Sibusiso Sibeko: Kirikou Antoinette Kellermann: Karaba Fezile Mpela: Uncle
Kombisile Sangweni: The Mother Mabutho Kid Sithole: The Old Man
Swahili voice cast Samson Komeka: Kirikou
Japanese voice cast Ryūnosuke Kamiki: Kirikou Atsuko Asano: Karaba Kaori Yamagata: Mother
Brazilian voice cast
Thiago Keplmair: Kirikou Sérgio Moreno: Adult Kirikou Lúcia Helena: Karaba Wendel Bezerra: the fetish on the roof Rosa Maria Baroli: Mother Marcelo Pissardini: Uncle
João Ângelo: Grandfather Eleu Salvador: The Old Man Tatiane Keplmair as Zoé, the big girl Fábio Lucindo: Boris, the big boy Rosana Beltrame: the force woman Thelma Lúcia: the old woman
Production The film was a co-production of Les Armateurs, Trans Europe Film, Studio O, France 3 cinéma, RTBF and Exposure in France, Odec Kid Cartoons in Belgium and Monipoly in Luxembourg. It was animated at Rija Films' animation studio in Latvia and Studio Exist in Hungary, with backgrounds painted at Les Armateurs and Paul Thiltges' animation studio, Tiramisu, in Luxembourg, digital ink and paint and compositing by Les Armateurs and Odec Kid Cartoons in Belgium and voices and music recorded in Senegal.Closing credits of the film.
The original French voice acting was performed by a cast of West African actors and schoolchildren and recorded in Dakar. The English dubbing, also directed by Ocelot, was made in South Africa. A dub of the film in the Swahili language was produced in Tanzania in 2009 through the help of the Danish Film Institute (DFI) and John Riber of Media for Development in Dar es Salaam.
Financing
Kirikou and the Sorceress was a low-budget film: one of the producers, Didier Brunner, explains this by the fact that the film was seen as an art/experimental project in the eyes of investors, as opposed to other more commercial projects (such as A Monkey's Tale by Jean-François Laguionie, which was closer to mainstream animated films like Disney).Interview of Gilles Ciment with Didier Brunner (producer of Kirikou) and Patrick Moine (producer of The King's Monkey) in April 2000. Positif. no. 472, June 2000. The planned budget, although small, was still not easy to raise, and the process of gathering it took time. The first funds assembled were an advance on receipts from the National Center of Cinematography of 2.2 million francs, and a participation from the Canal+ channel amounted to 3.5 million francs; the rest of the budget was raised internationally, which resulted in the production being scattered across several countries (as is more common for television series), complicating its creation further. The film greatly benefited from grants from several institutions: the CNC, the Eurimages Fund from the Council of Europe, the EU Media Programme, the Cinema and Audiovisual Center of the French Community of Belgium, the Agency for Cultural and Technical Cooperation, the International Fund for the Support of Audiovisual Production from Luxembourg, and Procirep.
Two years were needed to gather sufficient financial support for the film, and four years were needed for its actual production. The final budget of the film amounted to a total of 25 million francs at the time, or 3.8 million euros."The Kirikou by Michel Ocelot: a worldwide success", interview with Michel Ocelot on the International Commerce website on 5 July 2002, retrieved 7 August 2011.
Screenplay Michel Ocelot wrote the screenplay, although it was loosely inspired by African folktales."Director's Notes" on the English-language film site , retrieved 16 February 2011. He found the initial idea in a collection of popular traditional stories from West Africa, compiled by Equilbecq, an administrator from the French Colonies, in 1912. In one of the tales, a child speaks while still inside his mother's belly and demands to be born; she responds calmly, and the child is then born by himself and, afterwards, washes himself, and immediately goes to confront a sorceress who threatens the village. This prodigious child who inspired Kirikou is Izé Gani, made famous by the version given by Boubou Hama.Gorel Harouna (17 February 2006). "Cinema. 'Kirikou and the Wild Beasts' on the big screens". Niger: Le Républicain. retrieved 13 April 2013. Michel Ocelot retained the beginning of the tale largely untouched, but made many modifications to the rest of the story, so that the final screenplay was largely his own, if influenced, invention. In the original tale, the child had just as many powers as the sorceress, whom he ultimately killed outright; additionally, here was no further mention of his mother after his birth. In the animated film, however, Kirikou questions more and heals the sorceress instead of killing her; the sorceress was described as very powerful (she was said to have devoured all of the warriors of the village and dried up their single spring), and Kirikou's mother retained a role after the hero's birth. Some narrative techniques, however, that Ocelot borrow devices from Western tales, including the aggression of Karaba by men and the thorn that gives her magical powers form another unique element of the film's screenplay; likewise, the singular kiss that transformed Kirikou into an adult at the end of the story, which Ocelot borrowed from narrative techniques in Western tales. The names "Kirikou" and "Karaba" are also Ocelot's inventions and do not have any particular meaning; however, the name Karaba can be related to the fairy Carabosse. Ocelot insists that Kirikou, unlike the sorceress, has no special powers or magical talisman. The story is established in a week, followed by many rereadings.
Graphic design
Michel Ocelot dedicates several months to the visual design of characters and key sets. The graphic representation of Africa poses a problem, as African arts have a rich decorative tradition but rather few figurative graphic arts; Michel Ocelot draws inspiration from the paintings of Henri Rousseau to design the visual universe of the film, and from ancient Egyptian art for the appearance of the characters.
For the characters, Michel Ocelot starts by making sketches and outlines, aided by photographs, then simplifies and adapts the lines to arrive at well-defined models that meet the technical constraints of animation. A first version of the project used almost entirely black silhouettes moving over colored backgrounds, in a style close to shadow theater, similar to the short films previously made by Ocelot (including those later grouped in Princes and Princesses in 2000); but Ocelot has to abandon these initial visuals, as his advisors fear they won't be able to convince investors, and thus he develops a new project using colored line drawings, more akin to conventional animated films.
However, some elements of this first version remain in the follow-up, such as the general appearance of the sorceress Karaba, whose numerous jewels around her neck, arms, and chest make her gestures more legible in the shadow version. These many adornments, as well as Karaba's complex hairstyle, make her harder to animate later, but they are retained as she is a central character in the story. The other characters undergo numerous tweaks due to animation constraints: for instance, a rounded braid on Kirikou's mother's forehead is removed, and the grandfather's headdress must be simplified. The grandfather's final headdress, reminiscent of those worn by pharaohs of ancient Egypt, is actually inspired by a bronze from Benin dating back to the 16th century; likewise, Ocelot draws on statues from Sub-Saharan Africa and photographs of elderly men for the particular arrangement of his goatee.
For the animated fetishes that are under the command of the sorceress Karaba, Michel Ocelot draws inspiration from fetishes of traditional African art, borrowing from several styles and adding an aggressiveness unique to the servants of an evil sorceress. For example, the appearance of the "fetching fetish" (responsible for bringing objects to Karaba) is inspired by the Mumuye style, while the "speaking fetish" (the sorceress's spokesperson) draws from the Ogoni style, while others, like the "sniffing fetish", are pure visual inventions.