'Eiru' is part of the animation sampler screening at the World Animation Summit. Meet the filmmaker and watch the show on Wednesday, Nov. 19 at The Garland in N. Hollywood.
There’s always a special buzz in the animation community when Ireland’s beloved studio Cartoon Saloon delivers a new project. This year, a lyrical short titled Éiru — directed by studio veteran Giovanna Ferrari and produced by founder/producer/director Nora Twomey — has been receiving acclaim on the festival circuit and is aiming straight for the Oscar shortlist in the months ahead.
Ferrari, who has worked in various capacities on projects such as Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner, Wolfwalkers and Star Wars: Visions, answered a few of our questions about her memorable 2D-animated short, which centers on a brave young Iron Age warrior who saves her village from a mysterious drought by journeying deep into the earth.
“I am the proud mother of a teenage girl, so the memory of the early days of her adolescence is fresh in my mind,” explains Ferrari. “I remember myself at that age, the eagerness to please mixed with the need to rebel, that conflict between what I knew I was supposed to be and who I really was, the awkwardness of being a girl in a men’s world, in which the only way to be enough is to pretend to be a boy. This eternal female quest of finding yourself and your values, it’s something I still interrogate myself about every day, and it’s at the essence of Éiru’s personality.”
Photo: Andrzej Radka
“Some of the themes are pretty universal and speak of the particular moment we face on earth … Some are more personal, intimate, like my particular experience as a woman and as an expat and experiences of families around me.”
— Director Giovanna Ferrari
Cartoon Saloons ‘Éiru‘ is one of the most anticipated shorts of the year. (All images courtesy of Cartoon Saloon.)
Ferrari had been working at Carton Saloon for many years, as an animator, a storyboard artist and then as head of story. Twomey says she was excited to see what she could do with an opportunity to direct her own short. “Around that time, we were approached by Melanie Lynch, who is a founder of an organization called Herstory,” recalls the producer. “The aim of Herstory is to shine a light on women and female perspectives that have often been excluded or minimized in storytelling mediums such as film. So with Herstory, Screen Ireland and BCP, Cartoon Saloon went into production with a concept Giovanna had been developing in the studio, centering on a young girl called Éiru who wants to be a warrior.”
Twomey points out that shorts are expensive to produce inside a studio with overhead and an experienced crew. While the studio has delivered acclaimed shorts, such as Twomey’s own From Darkness (2002), Adrien Merigeau and Alan Holly’s Old Fangs (2009), Louise Bagnall’s Oscar-winning Late Afternoon (2017), it doesn’t have a regular shorts initiative. “We have produced shorts in the past, as part of Screen Ireland and the national broadcaster’s (RTE) Frameworks grant scheme, but Éiru was made outside of that avenue,” she explains. “We took advantage of a slight gap between productions to get it started, and with an artist like Giovanna, who can do so much with a small team, made the most of the opportunity.”
Producer Nora Twomey
Ferrari began work on her short in 2022 for a few months, during which she did some research, drew a lot of concepts and wrote a synopsis and some director notes. Then she started again in spring 2023, and from then on it took her and the team a year to complete the whole movie. “For the character animation, we mainly used TVPaint, with some exceptions,” she mentions. “We used Moho for some of the smaller background characters and some of the clan warriors; it helped to create a difference between the fluid and nuanced way Éiru moves and the very simple, rugged aspects of the warriors’ characters. FX used a mix of Toon Boom and TVPaint.”
A Timeless Heroine: ‘Éiru’ director Giovanna Ferrari says she has been inspired by the works of Joanna Quinn, Mary Blair, Nora Twomey, Hayao Miyazaki, Phil Mulloy, Satoshi Kon, Tomm Moore and Michaël Dudok de Wit.
The filmmaker says one of the toughest aspects of the production was figuring out what the underground mycelium and the visions inside it would look like. “I had a very clear idea in my mind, but I didn’t have the time to experiment and look for a pipeline that would allow me to successfully transpose on screen what I had in my mind in the time we had,” says Ferrari. “This meant that we had to compromise a lot and become very creative to find a solution that would fit all the scenes in the mycelium.
“I am very pleased with the layering of the movie’s narrative,” she adds “I love that each person in the audience comes away with their own connection to the theme and the character, depending on their own life experience. I was hoping to allow the audience to fill some gaps with their own interpretations, and so far it looks like it worked! That makes me very happy.”
Messages From the Heart
The director also points out that there are several layers and themes woven into the story. “Some of them are pretty universal and speak of the particular moment we face on earth and the challenges we and younger generations face,” she notes. “Some are more personal, intimate, like my particular experience as a woman and as an expat and experiences of families around me.”
When asked about the biggest lesson she learned during the production, Ferrari says, “Once again, I learnt a lesson I seem to keep on learning in animation: Patience is your best friend! For more than 20 years, I have been working on other people’s movies as a head of story, as an animator, as a storyboard artist; I have been consulting on dozens of other people’s scripts, and all this has given me a lot of knowledge that now I can channel into making my own movie.”
She concludes, “I feel it’s such an incredible chance because it made my life so much easier while directing my own short. It took away all the insecurities and fears I would have had if confronted with directing earlier on in my career!”
Éiru will play ahead of GKIDS’ North American theatrical screenings of the upcoming feature Little Amélie or the Character of Rain in select theaters on Oct. 30 and nationwide on Nov. 7. You can meet the director at the World Animation Summit and watch the short as part of Animation Magazine‘s Award Season Sampler on Wednesday, Nov. 19 at The Garland in N. Hollywood as well.
