European Film Screenings: Luxembourg animated short film Mr Hublot set to charm UAE audiences

Mr Hublot director Laurent Witz has kept his Oscar in a well protected place.

Laurent Witz (Director of Oscar winning animation film Mr Hublot) and the other one Stephan Roelants, Co-producer of the film Song of the Sea.To go with story by Jessica Hill
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One of the free movies to catch this weekend as part of the European Film Screenings is the Oscar-winning animation film Mr Hublot.

The film’s critical acclaimed resulted in an Academy Award for Best Short Film, the first for a production from the tiny European country of Luxembourg. Set in a mechanised world of factories and gears, Mr Hublot follows a man with obsessive compulsive symptoms who finds a tiny puppy-like robot shivering in a box and takes it home. But the new guest turns Mr Hublot’s world upside down when he wreaks havoc on his apartment.

It took three years for the film's directors, Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares, to finish their animated masterpiece, which was also made in 3D. Witz is no stranger to such technology, having worked as 3D supervisor on the Luxembourg-based television series Wordworld, T'choupi and Noukies.

“There were so many challenges with Mr Hublot. To build such a technical film with a small budget was very hard,” says Witz, who also wrote the film. “It cost US$300,000 (Dh1.1 million) at the time, which was a high budget for a short movie but for the kind of quality that I desired, it was very low. So I decided to make the film over a long period of time, sometimes on my own and sometimes as part of a team.”

When nominated for the Oscar last year, Witz spent seven weeks in the US before the big night lobbying studio producers, distributors, and filmmakers.

"Everybody was telling me 'you can't win. You have Disney (who were nominated for their film Get a Horse) against you so even if your film is better than theirs, you will lose," he recalls. "I was thinking that because there was one small possibility, I would try. I had to keep my focus on my objective, and it happened."

A week after returning back to Luxembourg from the ceremony last February, Witz stored the Oscar in the safest place he could think of — a safe in the vaults of his local bank. “I walked into my local bank and said ‘where can I put this?’ The people in the bank at the time were quite surprised.” Sometimes, there are occasions when Witz has to collect his prized possession from the bank to bring it along to special interviews. “When I come to collect my oscar, there are usually two or three guys who will see me at the entrance and like to come with me to touch it,” he says.

Mr Hublot is being shown along with three other Luxembourg-made short films, two of which have adult themes. Witz says just because his film his animated, it doesn’t mean it’s just for kids. “Mr Hublot is definitely for adults too,” he states. “A lot of people tell me that they are constantly checking things are in order when they are at home, so I think Mr Hublot and his symptoms speak to a part of everyone. I hope it will touch people in the audience in the UAE, too.”

Mr Hublot is screening as part of the Luxembourg Short Film Corner at the European Film Screenings festival on Friday October 23 at the Novo Cinemas, World Trade Centre Mall, Abu Dhabi. The Dubai screening will be held at Ibn Battuta Mall Cinema on Saturday October 24 at 6pm. Witz will be there to answer questions from the audience. All European Film Screenings sessions are free. Click here for the schedule.

artslife@thenational.ae