Paul Louise-Julie’s African Space Opera ‘Yohance’ Blasts Off with Official Trailer

Florida animation house Sanu Wara Studios has debuted the trailer for upcoming animated short Yohance: The Kalfani Job. Billed as a first-of-its-kind “African Space Opera,” the film is written, directed and animated by Paul Louise-Julie and adapted from his 2015 indie graphic novel of the same name.

The short, due to premiere on YouTube in Winter 2023/24, will serve as an introduction to the story world ahead of a planned feature film trilogy.

The story of Yohance: The Kalfani Job is a swashbuckling adventure that takes place primarily on the aquatic planet of Kalfani, following an elite operative who has been dispatched across the galaxy to recover a sacred artifact. However, he is soon confronted with things that shake his faith in everything he believes in.

This extraterrestrial epic imagines a galaxy anchored exclusively in Afrofuturist aesthetics, conceived and designed by Louise-Julie after living in West Africa and researching pre-colonial African cultures for nearly a decade. Production on the short was funded by a successful Indiegogo campaign which secured $13,000 in 2018 (before the pandemic) and an additional $150,000 was committed in 2021.

Per the trailer launch announcement, Louise-Julie believes that Yohance will fulfill an unmet need for Afrofantasy content “featuring the African diaspora in worlds that are fully their own,” where Black characters can be the protagonists of their own stories. He notes that “creating a fantasy or sci-fi story with an all-Black cast is no longer sufficient. The world that these characters exist in needs to also be informed by Black culture.”

Written, directed and animated by Louise-Julie, Yohance: The Kalfani Job is produced by Vlad Piverger and Candace Kidd with Chris Johnson executive producing. The short features an original score by Joel Santos.

Viewers can check out this vision for themselves, brought to life with photorealistic 3D CGI, in the official trailer below. Learn more about the project and find the Yohance comics at sanuwara.com.