Boy Who Wanted to Be a Bear Coming to Disc

While Disney’s Brother Bear enjoyed a higher profile and bigger box office receipts, it wasn’t the only animated feature of recent years to tell the story of a boy who undergoes an ursine transformation. Having earned international acclaim, The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Bear from famed Danish filmmaker Jannik Hastrup is finally coming to home video in North America. Central Park Media will release the touching and visually haunting family film on Feb. 8.

Based on an Inuit legend, The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Bear is a classic argument for nurture over nature. When a mother polar bear’s cub is stillborn in the Arctic wild, her mate steals a human baby boy to raise as their own. The boy grows to be a good bear, but his world comes crashing down when his real father comes to take him back and indoctrinate him in the human ways. Torn between two worlds, the young boy must make a nearly impossible decision and brave the perils of arctic to see it through.

We first caught this little 2D gem at Annecy in 2003 and were taken with the simple but elegant hand-drawn style and the economy of storytelling. There is a hint of Disney influence in the character of a talking crow sidekick included for the sake of comic relief, but despite that and other minor flaws, it’s well-made film that should appeal to both children and adults alike.

Festival kudos the film has garnered include the Adult and Children’s Jury Awards at the 20th Chicago Int’l Children’s Film Festival, Best Children’s Film Award from the 2003 Norwegian Children’s Film Festival and a Special Mention at the 2003 Berlin Int’l Film Festival. This year, it will screen at the KidsBestFest in Hartford, Con., as well as museums such as the newly reopened Museum of Modern Art in New York City and Washington DC’s National Gallery.

The Boy Who Wanted to Be a Bear is a co-production of Les Armateurs (the production house behind Oscar-nominated The Triplets of Belleville), Dansk Tegnefilm Produktion APS and France Television Distribution. It will be available as both a single DVD for a suggested $19.95 and a collector’s edition for around $29.95. The collector’s edition will include cast interviews, a stills gallery, an Arctic trivia quiz and more.