MIFF 2024 Director: Robert Connolly
Ten animators bring Alison Lester’s beloved children’s book to the screen, crafting a magical mixture of live action and animation that is destined to become a family favourite.
As children hear the enchanting words of Lester’s illustrated classic Magic Beach, they slip into spellbinding worlds of dream and whimsy. Now translated into animated form – covering traditional 2D, claymation, stop-motion and more – it can captivate a whole new generation of youngsters while evoking wonder in the already-familiar. From a host of undersea adventures, tall tales of salty smugglers and escalating sandcastle wars, to sibling-stealing seaweed monsters, psychedelic coral forests and a dog’s dream of shoals of ‘sausage fish’, everyone will find their own fantastical adventure within.
First published in 1990, Lester’s rhyming shrine to imaginative play has found its way into the hearts of countless Australians, from wide-eyed kids to the parents who’ve read it at bedtime more times than they can remember. To adapt it for the screen, Robert Connolly (Paper Planes, MIFF 2014; Balibo, MIFF 2009) enlisted 10 of Australia’s most talented animators – Susan Danta, Pierce Davison, Jake Duczynski, Emma Kelly, Simon Rippingale, Marieka Walsh, Eddie White, Lee Whitmore, Kathy Sarpi and Oscar nominee Anthony Lucas – to render a host of incredible, wildly diverse environments. Delivering an incandescent take on a revered Aussie work, the MIFF Premiere Fund–supported Magic Beach is a film of widescreen delight.
