Sun Xun's 'Magic Atlas' Becomes First Animated Feature in Tokyo Competition

Chinese artist and filmmaker Sun Xun never expected "Magic Atlas" to make history at the Tokyo International Film Festival. The film has become the first animated feature ever selected for TIFF's competition lineup — a milestone for a project Sun spent ten years building and financed, in part, out of his own pocket.

"I never thought of 'Magic Atlas' as an animated film," Sun told Variety. "To me, it brings together many art forms. Animation is simply the label we use for its form. I'm glad people at TIFF understood the effort I put into it."

What is 'Magic Atlas' about?

The film is set in Luocha, a coal-mining empire where flying is forbidden. Every 60 years, a festival wipes the population's memory of the era that came before. When a magician is arrested, he meets an orphan boy in prison and hands him the Magic Atlas — a book that points the boy toward a past the empire has tried to erase.

Visually, the film moves between woodblock prints, ink painting and vivid color. Its images often do the work a conventional plot might spell out, drawing on art and visual traditions from different periods and cultures. While making it, Sun studied Dunhuang murals, Song dynasty painting and calligraphy, alongside imagery from other cultures, including ancient civilizations like the pyramids and mythological elements.

What did it cost to make?

Sun says global events shaped the film — the pandemic and the war in Ukraine — along with personal changes, including his conversion to Buddhism. He put all his savings into the project. When galleries shut down during the pandemic, his art sales dried up, and he had to find buyers himself and take out loans to keep production going.

"I believe every creator should have one 'all-in' moment in their life: to make a defining work that takes everything out of them. For me, 'Magic Atlas' was that all-in moment," he said. "I hoped to finish it before my child grew up and while my parents were still alive. Sadly, my father passed away a year before the film was completed."

Does Sun Xun care if viewers find it hard to follow?

Not much. "There will always be a barrier to entry," he said. "Ten years of work naturally gives the film depth. But I made this important work for myself. My goal was to realize it, not to please every viewer."

He is equally blunt about storytelling. "I'm actually against 'story.' I don't mean that films shouldn't have stories. I object to films that emphasize story for the sake of packaging and commercial purposes. As an art form, film should express a state of being," he said. "Film cannot address reality directly, but it can take a wider view. It can express how we understand the world and what we are curious about."

He names Andrei Tarkovsky — citing 1983's "Nostalghia" — and the late Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr as models: "They are sincere in the way they approach existence. They don't rely only on imagined narratives."

What comes next?

Exhibitions connected to "Magic Atlas" are planned in the U.S. and Singapore, though venues and dates remain unannounced. Sun has also begun a new feature, "All or Nothing," whose Mandarin title "Fuyou" means "Mayfly." It continues the world of "Magic Atlas," shifting from the broad theme of forgetting to an individual experience of memory loss. He filmed the first shot at an exhibition space in Hangzhou and hopes to finish within two years.