Joseph Conrad’s classic novella “Heart of Darkness” is being adapted into an animated feature, with Michael Sheen, James Norton and Bill Nighy having already lent their voices.
The project is being directed by Welsh-based BAFTA-winning filmmaker Gerald Conn using an animation technique he specializes in using sand on glass and will be the first feature-length sand animation. Described as a “close adaptation” of Conrad’s novella, first published as a three-part serial in 1899 and regarded as a scathing critique of Western imperialism in Africa, the film script was written by Mark Jenkins and Mary Kate O Flanagan.
The “Heart of Darkness” project was actually first announced in 2019, but after a period in limbo is now moving forward with BreakThru films, the Polish-based production company founded by Hugh Welchman on board as a co-producer. BreakThru was behind the Oscar-nominated 2017 animation “Loving Vincent,” directed by Welchman and Dorota Kobiela and the first fully-painted animated feature, made using thousands of individually illustrated paintings. The company followed this up in 2023 with an even bigger undertaking using the same technique, “The Peasants.”
“It’s great to be back on track with the film although it’s taken some time and with BreakThru Films we’ve found the perfect creative partner,” said Conn, who will be presenting “Heart of Darkness” at the London Screenings. Conn added that Conrad was himself Polish, so being joined BreakThru had extra cultural significance.
“Heart of Darkness,” a dark and brooding exploration of human nature and colonialism, tells the story of Marlow, an idealistic seaman captaining a steamboat up the River Congo — then under brutal Belgian rule — in search of a mysterious figure named Kurtz who had carved out a kingdom in which he has power of life and death over his native subjects. In the animation, Sheen is voicing Kurtz, Norton is Marlow and Nighy is a character known as The Manager. All three have already recorded their voices.
Conn won the 1998 Welsh BAFTA for animated short “The Comet’s Tale.” His BFI commissioned animated short “Inner Polar Bear” — which was released in 2022 and tells the story of an Arctic polar bear whose existence is threatened by climate change — won nine international awards including a recent London Directors Award as well as a Welsh BAFTA nomination.
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