On March 1, GKIDS will present a special theatrical release of the much-lauded stop-motion film This Magnificent Cake!, from directors Marc James Roels and Emma De Swaef (Oh Willy…). In advance of this can’t-miss engagement, the stateside distributor is offering up a slice of the film to Animag readers with this exclusive clip.
This Magnificent Cake! was an official selection at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, Toronto International Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival and Animation Is Film Festival; and has been honored with an Annie Award nomination for Best Independent Animated Feature, the Andre-Martin Award at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, and the top feature animation prize at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
Synopsis: In the late 19th century, keen to compete with other European imperial powers on the continent, King Leopold II of Belgium proclaimed, “I do not want to miss a good chance of getting us a slice of this magnificent African cake.” The subsequent occupation of the Congo would come to attract a contingent of servants, merchants and miscellaneous bourgeois driven by everything from insatiable greed to existential fear. From the intimate stories of these characters — many of whom pass through a luxury hotel in the middle of the jungle – emerges a greater narrative concerning the imperialist mentality. In a film by turns surreal, darkly comic and brutal, directors Marc James Roels and Emma de Swaef ultimately turn their critical gaze on the colonists themselves in a work of stunning, mysterious beauty.
www.thismagnificentcake.com
