‘Shooom’s Odyssey’ director/producer launches feature debut with ‘On the Run’

Julien Bisaro and Claire Paoletti, the team of French directors and screenwriters behind the award-winning short film Shooom’s Odyssey (2020) are preparing their first feature film. The duo launched the animated film THE Little horse (Runaway) to co-production partners, as well as producers and broadcasters, at a session devoted to the industry at this year’s Annecy animation festival on Wednesday. Bisaro and Paoletti screened a two-minute pilot for the project, produced by France’s Picolo Pictures.

The children’s feature focuses on Cookie, a male penguin who cannot lay an egg. When a volcanic eruption disrupts her New Zealand hideaway and rolls an echidna egg her way, Cookie takes it as a sign that this is the parenthood opportunity she’s been craving and decides to raise the echidna chick as a he.

The theme of birds and the attention to parenting recall those of Bisaro and Paoletti Shooom’s Odyssey, which told the story of owl chick Shooom who hatches just as a storm is building in the bayou around her nest, separating her from her mother. The small part of her sets out on a road trip to find her mother or a suitable replacement, auditioning for an alligator and a raccoon along the way, before finding two children to care for her. Shoum won the Cristal Award for Best Television Project in Annecy in 2020 and won an Annie for Outstanding Achievement for Production Design in an Animated Television/Media Production. The 2D animated preschool film also sold worldwide.

Bisaro and Paoletti collaborated on Bisaro’s 2015 Cesar-nominated black-and-white short film Bang Bang!. Bisaro also worked as a storyboard artist on the Academy Award nominated (and Cannes and Annecy Winner) I Lost My Body (2019) and the 2009 Academy Award nominated (and Annecy Audience Award) Kells’ secret.