Oscar-Nominated 'Butterfly' Lauded for Animation Style

The Oscar-nominated animated short *Butterfly* (*Papillon*) tells the true story of Alfred Nakache, a Jewish French swimmer who competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, survived Auschwitz, and swam in the 1948 London Olympics. The 15-minute film was directed by 70-year-old French animator Florence Miailhe, a César Award winner. Miailhe has a personal connection to the story; her father was in the French Resistance with Nakache, and she took swimming lessons from Nakache's brother as a child. She was inspired by Nakache's resilience and wanted to explore themes of memory, discrimination, and the rise of authoritarianism, which she felt were relevant when she began the project in 2015 and even more so today. The film's striking visual style is achieved through a "film-painting" technique that Miailhe has developed over 30 years. This method involves animating oil paints, pastels, and sand directly under the camera on a glass plate. This process creates a fluid, impressionistic look where images and scenes bleed into one another, mimicking the nature of water and memory. For *Butterfly*, Miailhe adapted her technique by painting the backgrounds on canvas to give them a richer texture, while the water was animated on glass to achieve transparency and fluidity. The entire animation process for the short film took a year to complete. The film is produced by Sacrebleu Productions, with Ron Dyens, an Academy Award winner for the film *Flow*, serving as a producer.