Overview
- The adult animated feature, which premiered Thursday in a Cannes Special Screening, drew a seven-minute standing ovation from a packed audience.
- Director Leah Nelson adapts Sarah Leavitt’s autobiographical graphic novel with hand-drawn, mostly monochrome 2D animation that uses flashes of color to mark memory and emotion.
- The story moves from the book’s Vancouver setting to Maine and late-1990s San Francisco, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the mother and Abbi Jacobson as Sarah, joined by Bryan Cranston and Seth Rogen.
- Sales are underway, with Charades handling international rights and CAA Media Finance and UTA Independent Film Group on domestic, and the film next screens at the Annecy animation festival in June.
- Producers Seth and Lauren Miller Rogen, longtime Alzheimer’s advocates through Hilarity for Charity, and Louis-Dreyfus cited family ties to the disease, which shaped the premiere’s emotional tone.