19/06/2025 - Four surprising characters go on a real odyssey in this ambitious, dialogue-free movie that asks the audience to change their perspective

In Momoko Seto’s dialogue-free French-Belgian film Dandelion’s Odyssey [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Momoko Seto
film profile] – given the Paul Grimault Award at Annecy (see the news) following its premiere in the Cannes Critics’ Week – Dendelion, Baraban, Léonto and Taraxa are… four dandelion achenes. After surviving a nuclear explosion, they are stranded on a strange planet, looking for a place to live. But it will be a long journey.

Cineuropa: How difficult was it to make sure that these four had personalities? They can’t talk and their movements are limited.
Momoko Seto: My co-writer, Alain Layrac, and I wanted to bring emotions to these achenes. The big one’s name is Léonto. We named them because by doing that, they become more like a friend. He’s more courageous, almost like a leader. Taraxa, who’s always bending a little, pays more attention to the surroundings. Once that was established, we worked with lead animator Guionne Leroy, figuring out their movements, and then we hired four actors and actresses to embody them. One of them said about Léonto: “He’s not lazy; he’s usually very energetic. He’s just tired in that scene because he weighs more than the others.” She really knew him! Guionne also came up with many details – they bend when they are not feeling good. When they are happy, they hug. Our sound designer, Nicolas Becker, added even more layers.

It’s really about the circle of life, and there’s something hopeful about it. The world can be in ruins, but then it can grow again.
It’s complicated because, of course, it’s about rebirth. But it also takes on death. It’s not really shown in the film – the characters disappear. We don’t know if they are dead or not. In the beginning, the Earth is destroyed by humans. Seeds symbolise the possibility of the future and hope. You can put them anywhere, and they can bloom. For my daughter, the destruction of the Earth was too abstract. The “death” of one character touched her much more. I told her: “It’s not clear if he’s dying – he’s planting his seed somewhere. The soil is not good, but the root might still be there.” I’m from Japan, and in our culture, death is not the end. It enables something else to be born. In nature, individuality doesn’t exist. When something’s dying, it’s to let another thing survive.

It’s funny when you think how often death is a big part of animated films. If you ask anybody about their childhood trauma, they will mention Bambi or something similar.
In Bambi or The Lion King, the parents die – often in front of their children. It’s very dramatic; you see the protagonist crying. I didn’t want to do it this way, but it still traumatised my daughter a bit! I live in France, and in Europe, you have this idea that death is just bad. In my culture, we have a little less dramatisation of it.

The universe you show is recognisable, but a bit odd and elevated. How far did you want to go?
I wanted things to be recognisable. I’ve made four short films set on those planets, where something very familiar becomes very strange. Maybe it’s close to what Walter Benjamin said about the concept of “aura” when describing something very close and very far. I like this feeling. It makes you realise that something we see every day wouldn’t look out of place in a science-fiction film.

I love animated movies that don’t use dialogue. Your film and Flow [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Gints Zilbalodis
interview: Red Carpet @ European Film …
film profile] prove that you don’t need it in order to understand everything.
When we would meet film commissioners, they would ask: “How can we understand the story?” But there are plenty of examples of films with no dialogue at all, from Minuscule [+see also:
trailer
film profile] to Fantasia, or even The Naked Island [from 1960]. There were really two things on my mind. I wanted to make a film where the audience becomes seeds. You yourself also became a seed – it’s a different experience, and I’m asking you to embrace it for one hour and 15 minutes. Seeds don’t use language the way we do. To suddenly make them talk would have betrayed this whole idea. There was this anthropologist in the USA, arguing that we need to start viewing nature as a protagonist. It’s not just about us. The tree is a protagonist, the soil is a protagonist, the leaf is a protagonist. We must change the way we look at them. When you are watching this film, you are no longer human.

And what was the second thing?
I’m convinced that words are poorer than non-verbal expression. In animation, seeing someone crying or bending their head is more powerful than having them say: “I’m sad.” Perhaps it comes from my experience of trying to learn French and being unable to speak it for a long time.

In one of Disney’s Silly Symphonies, trees are the protagonists. But it’s all about anthropomorphism: they have eyes, and their branches resemble arms. My proposition is a bit more radical: let’s move further into the experience of being a plant. My Japanese culture is very animist. We believe that not only nature, but also objects, have a soul. When we were filming, I brought my family along, and my kids went to a school that had this slogan: “Take care of humans, take care of nature, take care of the objects around you.” A chair might not have eyes, but it can generate so many emotions. Maybe it used to belong to your grandmother, and you keep taking care of it? And now, maybe it feels like it has a soul?