Aurel Preps Animated Western ‘Desert’

Filmmaker and editorial cartoonist Aurel will follow up his César-winner “Josep” with “Desert,” an animated Western set in France’s Cevennes mountain range. 

Pitched between a more traditional oater and an “Indiana Jones” style adventure and set in the late 19^th century, “Desert” will follow a Mexico-born gunslinger exploring south-central France with a mysterious mission. Rediscovering his family’s ancestral land centuries after the religious wars forced those kinsmen to flee, our caballero soon steps in to protect a local clan from an oppressive landowner and his abusive henchmen.

“We want to bring together two universes that should have nothing to do with one another,” says the filmmaker.

The project will reunite much of the same creative team behind 2020’s award-winning “Josep,” among them screenwriter Jean-Louis Milesi and producer Serge Lalou of Les Films d’Ici Méditerranée, as well as animation studios Les Fées Spéciales in Montpellier and Tchack in Lille. “We’re a family,” says Aurel.

Much of that family was also on hand at this year’s Cartoon Forum in Toulouse, where Aurel and producers from Les Films d’Ici presented their short-form series “Animals in a Nutshell.”

Adapted from science journalist Nathaniel Herzberg’s zoology columns in newspaper Le Monde – where Aurel worked as an editorial cartoonist for two decades before stepping down earlier this year – the educational series will explore the natural world with a playful and irreverent tone.

Brought to life with feisty narration by singer and actor Camélia Jordana (“Irresistible”), each four-minute episode plays as an off-kilter slideshow, jumping from illustration to education to pure gags.   

“Nathaniel’s voice is very lively, very punchy,” says Aurel. “He can relay dense scientific and zoological research in a very funny and accessible way, and we want to translate that style. Both Nathaniel and I work on serious subjects without taking ourselves too seriously.”