‘I love a challenge’: French animator Florence Maielle on her first Oscar nomination at age 70 | film

“MMy father liked me to swim competitively. I was in a club when I was young, but I always started a little late in races so I had no chance of winning. French animation director Florence Maille laughs about how her swimming career was over before it even began. Fortunately, the same does not apply to filmmaking. At 70, she may be overdue for her first Academy Award nomination, in the animated shorts category; But the work in question – the emotional and richly detailed film Papillon, about French-Jewish world-record swimmer Alfred Naccache – gives her every chance of winning the award.

Miialhi isn’t sure why Naqash – whom her parents met while they were in the resistance – popped into her mind again in mid-2010. “Honestly, I don’t know why my memory was working this way. Maybe it was because I was thinking about my father,” Miialhi says. Memory is what passes through Papillon, who is swept away by waves of memories as Nakashi bathes for the last time in Cerbere on the Spanish border (where he died of a heart attack in 1983).

He sails down through the waves, stirring up the sediment of the years: growing up in Algeria, overcoming his early fear of water, meeting his wife, Paul as he rises through the ranks of competitive swimming, participating in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and being stripped of citizenship in Vichy France before eventually being sent to Auschwitz. Hand-animated by Miailhe on sheets of glass directly below the camera, each frame overlapping the last, it is an almost physical baptism in oils, pastels and sand, quickly diving into shock and renewal.

Mielhi grew up in Toulouse, where Nakache was based during World War II, and actually took swimming lessons with his brother, William, while on holiday on the Mediterranean coast. The hero’s ostracism has sad contemporary resonances for the director, who is also Jewish. “A while ago in France, the idea that we could deprive a group of their citizenship, because they belong to another community or religion, came back,” she said on a Zoom call from New York, where she is promoting Papillon to Oscar voters ahead of the March 15 ceremony. With slicked-back black hair and bold red glasses, the oval-shaped Miailhe syncs playfully with the two-tone decor at the Sanctuary Hotel on 47th Street.

In her view, sports are a growing arena for highlighting such issues: “Regardless of whether he is Jewish or not, what interested me was how just being a champion is not enough to prevent this discrimination.” There was a consensual silence around the discussion in the post-war period when he returned from the concentration camp without his wife and daughter. Not least imposed by the athlete himself, who, like many others, did not want to talk about his experiences. By the 21st century, he was largely forgotten, except for a few swimming pools that bear his name. But the recent success of Léon Marchand, who Nakache coached at the Club Dauphine du Touec, has revived interest in the history of swimming in Toulousan, says Mielhi.

Behind the human story that is natural Oscar territory lies Miaelhei’s formidable technique. After initially following her mother, the painter Mireille Glodek-Miaelhi, into static visual arts, she was encouraged by experimental animator Robert Labojade to explore the possibilities of movement. With almost no animation schools in France in the 1980s, he encouraged her to enroll in school — which she literally did in the 1991 short “Bathroom,” a Picasso abstraction emitting bathroom fumes.

Water seems to be her element, and she observed it closely for a range of visual effects in Papillon: “It’s not a scientific study, but something more sensual and delicate. What interests me is to represent how it is never the same and always transforming.” So, for example, she moves an extra layer of oil over the swirls and bulges she’s painting to give the 3D impression of refraction or distortion, or real soap bubbles layer her paint texture to give more foam and ripple to the water.

Her work is all about embracing happy accidents – even if drawing live in a single frame developing in front of the camera exposes her to bigger mistakes that can ruin entire sequences. Mielehi enjoys the risky and personal nature of her work in the age of encroaching artificial intelligence. “It is very difficult and stressful,” she says. “But I like the challenge aspect.”

Papillon — which shares a producer on the 2024 Oscar-winning animated feature Flow — was a more high-profile act in this regard than its only film, 2021’s refugee fairy tale La Traversée (The Crossing); There, the backgrounds remained completely separate from the foreground figures. For the latter, she had an international team working in four locations to produce the 57,600 drawings needed, versus just four women. Papillon. But relying on others brings its own problems, such as uncertainty about her collaborators’ ability to dig through paint and rescue sequences that go awry: “I know how meticulous I can be with myself and whether I can judge whether something is going well or not, or when to start again.”

Mielehi will leave no room for mishaps — happy or otherwise — if she wins an Oscar. The nomination came as a shock, but she knows the tough pitch for her upcoming speech: “Why I originally wanted to do it and what point it speaks to today.” She’s keenly aware of the country she’ll be speaking in, as well as the parallel between fellow swimmers who have walked away from the pool in protest at his exclusion, and current suggestions of a boycott of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. But the real prize shines brighter than any statuette. She is firm in this regard: “It is important to talk about human rights and try to live right.”