The trailer dropped today for DreamWorks Animation’s Forgotten Island (Universal, September 25), the studio’s first embrace of Filipino culture about friendship and memory. The comedy-adventure follows two lifelong friends who grow up together in the ’90s in the Philippines — Jo (singer H.E.R./Gabriella Wilson) and Raissa (Liza Soberano) — and the stakes of potentially growing apart. However, after magically entering the lost island of Nakali (deeply rooted in Filipino folklore), filled with mythical plants and creatures, they realize that the cost of returning home is forgetting one another.

Forgotten Island is written and directed by Joel Crawford (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, The Croods: A New Age) and Januel Mercado (The Last Wish co-director) and produced by Mark Swift (The Last Wish). The voice cast also includes Lea Salonga, Dave Franco, Manny Jacinto, Jenny Slate, Jo Koy, Dolly de Leon, Ronny Chieng, and Amielynn Abellera.

The film was inspired by Crawford and Mercado’s close friendship at DreamWorks, where they first met as story artists on Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011), as well as their Filipino connections. Mercado is Fil-Am and Crawford’s wife, Kathy, is Filipina, and they took both of their families on the research trip to the Philippines, which involved emotional family reunions.

“A big inspiration is my wife Kathy,” Crawford said during a Q&A Monday at the DreamWorks trailer launch event. “Without our family and the strong women in our family, this movie would not exist.”

“We feel like this theme of friendship is a very specific thing that we’ve all experienced, but a universal thing that we all relate to,” added Mercado.

Meanwhile, the lead voice actors, Wilson and Soberano, who also appeared at the trailer launch event, bonded as well. They got sweet, ridiculous, and absurd when recording together, which is uncommon in animated features. Jo is the wild card, who’s talented at drawing graphic pictures, while Raissa is the pragmatist who’s interested in science. “You two have set the bar in terms of joy, working with talent that are at the top of the game, and just bringing a level of passion that inspires not only us but the entire crew,” Mercado offered.

Not surprisingly, the colorful Philippine locations, culture, and folklore were inspiring to everyone, including production designer Ryan Carlson and art director Chris Grun, but setting it in the ’90s was important to the directors. “Just for us, to spend out years growing up in the ’90s, where we found the fashion and style and experiences with the lifelong friends that we make, there’s a seed of nostalgia for us that really activates relatability,” Crawford explained.

“So much of the ’90s, especially a story about friends growing apart, is the feeling like it’s going to be final,” continued Crawford. “When a friend is going off to college [Raissa has a scholarship to attend Caltech], will you see them again? Will they forget you? You can’t just FaceTime. That was the thing about setting it in the ’90s, where there was something temporal and temporary. You think about photos. Polaroids are a big part of this movie. For us, you think about a Polaroid pack and you’ve got 12 pictures and you’re going to be very specific how you use them.”

In addition to the trailer, they screened a bittersweet clip in which the girls hang out one last time together and they discover the elusive sun portal to the Forgotten Island they’ve been seeking since childhood. It contains some wild animation, extending the 2D stylization that they experimented with on The Last Wish.

“I think, traditionally, animation has been put in a small box, that it’s for kids,” Crawford said. “And we loved on Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, really pushing and evolving [the 2D elements]. Here, we were like, ‘Let’s just blow the walls off this box. Let’s just go big. And so there’s a lot of ties to anime in terms of action or pushing character expressions.”

“In addition to those colors, we treat cinematography like you’re actually shooting a film,” added Mercado. There’s wider lenses, there’s more [how] light leaks into the camera. And it is all connected, again, to the theme of memories and nostalgia and the pictures we take.”

“And to call out one of those moments from the scene, when Jo and Raissa are sitting on the jeepney hood and the sun is setting, we loved using wide-angle lenses, but not in a traditional way of using them during action scenes,” Crawford explained. “This movie’s about moments that become memories, and so using wide-angle lenses, which makes things feel big, to make the small moments feel really meaningful,