{"id":672426,"date":"2026-11-02T06:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T06:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/672426\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T06:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T06:50:08","slug":"tokyo-competitions-first-animated-feature-was-sun-xuns-all-in-bet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/672426\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo Competition’s First Animated Feature Was Sun Xun’s All-In Bet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tChinese artist and filmmaker Sun Xun never expected \u201cMagic Atlas<\/a>\u201d to become the first animated feature selected for the Tokyo International Film Festival<\/a>\u2019s competition.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI never thought of \u2018Magic Atlas\u2019 as an animated film. To me, it brings together many art forms. Animation is simply the label we use for its form. I\u2019m glad people at TIFF understood the effort I put into it,\u201d Sun tells Variety.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMagic Atlas,\u201d a decade in the making, is set in Luocha, a coal-mining empire where flying is forbidden. Every 60 years, a festival leaves the population unable to remember the era that came before. After a magician is arrested, he meets an orphan boy in prison and gives him the Magic Atlas. The book points the boy toward a past the empire has tried to erase.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film moves between woodblock prints, ink painting and vivid color. Its images often do the work that a conventional plot might spell out, drawing on art and visual traditions from different periods and cultures.<\/p>\n

\n\tSun says the film was shaped by global events, including the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as well as personal changes such as his conversion to Buddhism. He put all his savings into the project. When galleries shut down during the pandemic, his art sales dried up. He says he had to find buyers himself and take out loans to keep the film going.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn my own artistic thinking, I believe every creator should have one \u2018all-in\u2019 moment in their life: to make a defining work that takes everything out of them. For me, \u2018Magic Atlas\u2019 was that all-in moment,\u201d he says. \u201cI hoped to finish it before my child grew up and while my parents were still alive. Sadly, my father passed away a year before the film was completed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRather than comment on any one event, Sun says, he drew on different cultural and political influences to reflect the divisions he sees around the world. He also brought in images of ancient civilizations, including the pyramids, alongside mythological elements.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFilm cannot address reality directly, but it can take a wider view. It can express how we understand the world and what we are curious about,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tAsked whether films need to explain their stories clearly, Sun says: \u201cI\u2019m actually against \u2018story.\u2019 I don\u2019t mean that films shouldn\u2019t have stories. I object to films that emphasize story for the sake of packaging and commercial purposes. As an art form, film should express a state of being.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSun names Andrei Tarkovsky, citing 1983\u2019s \u201cNostalghia,\u201d and the late Hungarian filmmaker B\u00e9la Tarr as filmmakers he admires. \u201cThey are sincere in the way they approach existence. They don\u2019t rely only on imagined narratives. To me, that is the kind of artistic form cinema should have,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile working on \u201cMagic Atlas,\u201d Sun studied Dunhuang murals, Song dynasty painting and calligraphy, along with imagery from other cultures. Asked if he worries that some viewers might find the film difficult to follow, he says: \u201cThere will always be a barrier to entry. Ten years of work naturally gives the film depth. But I made this important work for myself. My goal was to realize it, not to please every viewer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSun says exhibitions connected to \u201cMagic Atlas\u201d are planned in the U.S. and Singapore, though venues and dates have not been unveiled. He has also begun a new feature he calls \u201cAll or Nothing,\u201d whose Mandarin title, \u201cFuyou,\u201d means \u201cMayfly.\u201d The film will continue the world of \u201cMagic Atlas,\u201d moving from the broad theme of forgetting to an individual experience of memory loss. Sun says he filmed the first shot at an exhibition space in Hangzhou and hopes to finish the feature within two years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chinese artist and filmmaker Sun Xun never expected \u201cMagic Atlas\u201d to become the first animated feature selected for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[93,61,60,284839,270,8169],"class_list":["post-672426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-magic-atlas","tag-movies","tag-tokyo-international-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}