Highly Spirited and Flying Bark Productions’ adaptation of Shaun Tan’s anthology Tales from Outer Suburbia will make its world premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France.
Currently in production, the 10 x 22 minute series is one of 30 TV specials/series announced as competing in the festival’s official selection. Selected to screen is episode 3, ‘Distant Rain’.
Based on Tan’s book by the same name,Tales from Outer Suburbia follows ‘almost thirteen-year-old’ Klara and her six-year-old brother Pim after they move to Outer Suburbia with their newly single mother Lucy. The siblings’ summer holiday turns into a series of unexpected and surreal adventures.
Tan is overseeing the project as creative director, working alongside Highly Spirited producer Sophie Byrne, with whom he collaborated on Oscar-winning short The Lost Thing. From Flying Bark, Barbara Stephen is executive producer and Alexia Gates-Foale producer. Noel Cleary is the director of the series, which is utilising CGI animation with a handcrafted stop-motion look and feel. Production has taken place at Flying Bark’s studio in Sydney and at Siamese in Perth.
“It’s a great honour to see Tales from Outer Suburbia participate in the Annecy Festival. This series is a heartfelt reflection on suburban family life, and a labour of love for its inspired creative team. It’s been wonderful to see our shared memories of childhood and family transmuted into beautiful animation, a visual language both otherworldly and universal, where hidden feelings reveal themselves as the most unlikely situations and characters,” said Tan.
“We hope that both young and old audiences find something thrilling and thought-provoking within our strange little Australian world of cat-girls, deep sea divers, sky fish, unexpected houseguests and secret rooms. Are these not things we’ve all experienced at one time or another?”
Tales from Outer Suburbia will air on the ABC in Australia and BYU in the US. Screen Australia and the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF) provided major production investment in association with the ABC, with additional finance from Screenwest. ACTF is repping international sales.