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On the day of its nomination, we spoke to directors Ross Stewart and Tomm Moore.
Tomm Moore: I think just having the whole crew watch the nominations was fun and nerve-racking.
Never been nominated for another Golden Globe myself, so it definitely feels surreal.
RS: We havent seen some of the crew since last year when the film finished up.
Because of COVID we havent gotten to meet.
So it was just nice to see familiar faces.
And whats lovely is that it seems to be catering to such a wide range of ages.
All the way up to teenage kids are loving it.
TM: I have a 3-year-old granddaughter whos quite sensitive, and shesFrozenmad.
She just loves Elsa and Anna.
And the other day, she wandered into the office and asked, Could [I] watch Robyn?
She calls every movie by the main characters name.
We watched it up to the running-with-the-wolves sequence.
We kind of left it at that because she gets frightened easily.
You turn Oliver Cromwell into this Claude Frollostyle animated villain.
It grapples with the evils of colonialism and has a strong anti-puritanical message.
Its about the loss of this beautiful pagan culture, and the forests being cleared out.
It was a time of huge environmental destruction.
There was a determined focus to make the wolves extinct.
And then this puritanical force came in and replaced it.
And it was very much patriarchal.
It was very much dominion over nature.
And it was very much about taming the wildness, inside as well as outside.
That whole way of looking at nature as something to be dominated really has to change.
RS: And with regards to Oliver Cromwell hes, like, the villain of Irish history.
Hes universally hated among Irish people.
Hes the guy who canceled Christmas and everything.
Then we thought that was the period that the Travellers were kind of created.
The Moores ended up settling, but the ODowds became Travellers.
So its just a bit of a nod.
And they used to tell lots of stories.
And they used to have all the old crafts and everything.
One thing about the ending is its very bittersweet.
They are uprooted from their home; theyre forced to travel off to somewhere where they wont be persecuted.
Like Remi Chayes films, Sylvain Chomets films, great European films like that.
Not even to talk about the Japanese ones that have come out that have really embraced a unique style.
Irelands always been like that.
I think we just benefited from that middle ground.
Because theres a definite commercial value to fitting in.
Were always up against that.
The stuff that were doing might have seemed really weird 15 years ago because everyone was rushing toward CG.
But now Im seeing stuff likeSpider-Verse.Big studios are starting to get kind of experimental.
I always say, We wore the same pants for long enough that they came back into fashion.
Young kids arent watchingThe Triplets of Belleville.TM: They were childrens films.
That was our primary audience.
And then the animation fans and adults as a secondary concern.
Maybe the next movies we make will be more focused at different demographics.
One of my favorite things about the animation inWolfwalkersis the visible pencil lines.
They do so much for movement and expression.
I love seeing those sketchy lines either kept in, or overlaid, or however you do it.
TM: you’re able to see the artists hand.
I watchedShaun the Sheep: Farmageddonthe other day, and I love that because theres just a tone.
you could see the thumb prints on their faces, but its actually really touching.
At first its goofy because its just little Plasticine characters, but you really buy into them.
It leaves the rough edges in, and its part of the job.
How involved were you in the character-design process?
The designs are so wonderful, especially those of Mebh and Moll.
Moll is just this giant, powerful, big hug of a person.RS: Shes a big Earth mother.
TM: She was probably one of the saddest casualties.
And a big thing for Ross and myself was that we were kind of tired of our own style.
They brought their own style to it.
And the same thing happened a bit with Bill and Lord Protector.
These adult characters were becoming so interesting that scenes that wed storyboard with them people were mad to animate.
We had to cut things down.
It was a really poignant moment.
And we ended up trimming it.
So we kind of left Moll much more mysterious.
But its been fun to see what a fan favorite shes been.
So we had to really make the animals very much like animals.
Do they have some kind of human personalities to them?
How great is their intellect?
Even though there is fantasy in the story, we had to straddle that realism.
There is supposed to be danger there.
Theres supposed to be the fact that you could get shot by a crossbow and die.
We didnt want to make it that only the animals that were able to talk were valid.
All these weird little arguments that the human race has made for itself.
At what stage intoWolfwalkers development did Aurora get involved?
It wasnt a big moment in the script.
So that sequence we knew was important.
But I happened on the song by chance when I was going for a run at lunchtime.
That was before Aurora was super well known.
She agreed to be part of the movie.
So, yeah, it was just good happenchance.
Good algorithm suggesting a good song for me.
