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By "Waltz with Bashir" creator Ari Folman,
"Where is Anne Frank" goes beyond the narrative of Frank's
diary, written by the teenager when she hid with her family
during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands.
Through Kitty, who leaps out of the pages into contemporary
Holland, Folman connects the story to a generation of teens
wearing torn jeans and baseball caps, against the backdrop of a
refugee crisis in Europe that provokes fresh dilemmas for the
characters and viewers.
"I had to invent something new. I couldn't do the diary as it
was," Folman told Reuters in an interview, adding that it was
"important for me to reach a younger audience as I can get ...
to see what do we take from the Anne Frank story to our lives
today".
The animated film - lavishly drawn in shifting styles, including
as Anne and Kitty let their imagination run riot and fight off a
Nazi army - was years in the making, and was influenced by
current affairs.
The film also uses humour to connect to its audience,
highlighting funny passages from Anne's own diary - like a
fart-prone house guest - or modern-day winks, like an appearance
by U.S. singer Justin Bieber at the Anne Frank museum.
"I think I needed to break iconisation. Anne Frank was much more
than an icon ... She was a teenager, she had all classic issues
of teenager - hated her mother, big fights, envy of her sister,"
Folman said.
Folman, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, said he first
read "The Diary of Anne Frank" when he was 14.
(Reporting by Michaela Cabrera and Sarah White; Editing by
Frances Kerry)
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