August 5th, 2024 
Jackson Murphy 
Sisters Carmen and Juliette venture into a world created by someone they love that’s filled with intense weather and strong emotions. What will they discover, and will they make it back home? Find out as GKIDS screens festival award-winning feature Sirocco and the Kingdom of Winds in theaters nationwide on Sunday August 11th and Monday August 12th. Here’s my Animation Scoop Q&A with director Benoit Chieux. (This interview was conducted with a translator on Zoom, and it was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: “Sirocco” is about the creativity of writers. Where did your imagination want to go as you were coming-up with this story and envisioning this film?
Benoit Chieux: First, I want to emphasize that the first ideas for the film were with drawings, not with text. And in a way, I worked in reverse order. So in this film, I began with the images and then I went back and did the text. I really wanted to create a universe, and when I had, then I had to find the screenwriters to work with me. I worked a lot with Alain Gagnol, who’s been a friend for a long time. When I had all my images put together, Alain really approached them like pieces in a puzzle. He was able to give them a beginning and an ending in a much more coherent way than it seemed just from the drawings. And he also had some original contributions of his own. One of the most important was this very strong idea he had about the relationships between sisters Agnes and Selma and the disappearance of Selma. That was his contribution to the script.
JM: Wow. That’s a very powerful element to the movie. I wanted to ask you specifically about one of the scenes where the characters are travelling and they can hear Agnes’ voice but they can’t see her. There’s that longing for someone. What does that aspect mean to you?
BC: This is really a key moment and it happens right in the center of the film. It’s really meant to show and speak about the relationships between the two pairs of sisters, Selma and Agnes but also Carmen and Juliette. It’s a very important moment, and Alain Gagnol had it in his story. And what I needed to do was to bring this murmuring and whispering, which was so strong in the written word, to give it a visual context. It happens just at the brink of them being in two different worlds. You have the sky, and the sky in effect is the mirror of what is the fantasy that is happening.
JM: Right away, I got the inspiration of Dr. Seuss with the houses. The characters jumping into the hopscotch reminded me of “Mary Poppins”. And in looking at the Mayor character, he reminded me a little bit of The Muppets. How are all of those inspirations for you for the film?
BC: I’m really happy that you got all of those references because they’re not well known in France, so people don’t pick up on them quickly. Dr. Seuss is not really well known in France. He’s certainly an influence for the town. I didn’t have the “Mary Poppins” reference myself, but I did in fact make the reference to Jim Henson’s Muppets. I’m really very tempted by the idea of making a film using those kinds of Muppets / puppets.
JM: The sisters [Carmen and Juliette] become cats. Did you study cat and human behavior?
BC: I have three children [including] two girls. A lot of the sisters’ relationships are based on concrete facts that I’ve observed. I love cats too. I have a cat. The characters are very engaging. You become very attached to them. I thought it was interesting to show the cats not only when they’re purring but also when they’re meowing and they’re scratching. To have that with the character of Juliette seemed to me to be an interesting juxtaposition.
JM: And does weather fascinate you as well?
BC: Weather is something that’s very important today. And I live in a valley in France where we have lots of wind. So the wind is really part of my everyday life. I also wanted to create a visual world of the weather, so you have a visual representation of the wind and a very specific one of the clouds. The clouds have a very specific form, and they have very specific colors. To approach it from a graphic — almost sculptural — point of view, is something that’s very different from what is normally done in cinema.
JM: The animation is excellent. “Sirocco” won the Audience Award at Annecy and the Animation Is Film Festival. Two prestigious honors. How were those experiences sharing the film with those audiences and juries?
BC: First and foremost, I made this film for children, not for animation professionals (laughs), so I love to show it to audiences that have lots of children… to see their reactions. But of course it was a real honor to get these prestigious prizes, particularly at Annecy, where it was the very first time it had been shown. And it was chosen as the opening film for the festival. You can imagine it was a very stressful time for me. I’m not sure I completely remember what my exact feelings were at the time, but it was a privilege.
JM: For people who are missing their loved ones who have passed away — longing to be connected to loved ones again — what do you hope they take away from watching your film?
BC: This plays a very important role in the film because it’s really the death of Selma that enables Agnes to become the creative person that she becomes and to create her new universe, which is dedicated to her sister and would not have been possible without the death of her sister. So it speaks to the role of creation (whether it be in drawing or in music or in painting). And also, you can feel pain but then that pain can be turned around and used in resource to feed something else, in this case the creativity.
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