10/06/2025 - The visually ambitious feature blends live action with animation in a “neon-noir” tale of vice, validation and deception

British-Romanian directorial duo Anton and Damian Groves are currently in post-production on their debut hybrid animation feature, King Wray, following the completion of a 23-day shoot in Bucharest at the end of May. Developed over five years, the English-language project marks the brothers' first foray into feature filmmaking after a decade of creating shorts and commercial work. The film combines live action with a layered animation technique to create a surreal “neon-noir” universe, fusing graphic-novel aesthetics with cinematic storytelling.

The plot follows Leon, a young man who reconnects with his estranged father Ike, a once-legendary cult noise-rock performer – known as King Wray – now living with a physical disability. Drawn into his father’s delusional scheme for a staged comeback tour, Leon agrees to impersonate him on stage. As he slips deeper into this role, Leon becomes caught in a disorientating spiral of performance and reality, gradually consumed by the same illusions that once destroyed his father.

Visually, King Wray employs a hybrid style that integrates three distinct layers – a live-action base, an animated background layer and a frame-by-frame animated FX layer. “We’re telling the story of a dysfunctional father-son relationship, exploring their psychological power struggle through the lens of a punk musician’s doomed comeback tour,” Anton and Damian Groves told Cineuropa. “The exploration of new forms of visual language and experimentation has always been at the heart of our creative approach as a directorial duo. Driven by musical angst, we propose a neon-noir world with a graphic-novel sensibility for our characters to navigate within – a hybrid live-action/animated film dealing with themes of vice, validation and deception.”

The cast features British actors Felix Edwards (Internal Abyss) as Leon and Reid Anderson (Enemy of the Heart) as Ike, alongside Natalie Roles, Isata Kamara, Guy Combes and Jud Charlton. The creative team includes DoP Radu Voinea, editor Bogdan Orcula, production designer Lulu Petrescu and costume designer Ina Isbașescu. While the movie was filmed in real locations, the production design and post-production effects play a central role in transforming the environments into a stylised, hyper-real animated world.

The film is being produced by Ana Maria Pîrvan and Dan Mateescu for Romania’s Studioset Production. Pîrvan commented: “King Wray is my first experience with animation, and it has opened the door to an entirely new creative approach. It is a challenging process, where we repeatedly redefined the visual approach – the combination of live action with animation. We are grateful to our co-producers, partners and team for supporting us in bringing to life such a demanding debut feature.”

Music lies at the core of the movie’s tone and world-building. The directors have collaborated with up-and-coming Paris-based noise-rock band The Psychotic Monks, whose raw, distorted sound will define both the soundtrack and King Wray’s on-stage persona. Original compositions are provided by band members Paul Dussaux and Martin Bejuy, who are also contributing to the film’s overall sound design. Croatian sound engineers Filip Ledinščak and Dino Ljuban are overseeing the soundscape, while Adam Blažuj served as the on-set mix technician.

King Wray is a Romanian-French-Croatian co-production staged by Ana Maria Pîrvan and Dan Mateescu (Studioset Production), in co-production with Emmanuel Quillet for France’s Midralgar and Ivana Marinić Kragić for Croatia’s Marinis Media. It has been supported by the Romanian National Film Center (CNC), the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (French CNC), and regional funding bodies including Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Région Sud Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur and Région Grand Est.

Post-production is currently under way in Romania, France and Croatia, and the total budget stands at €1.8 million. The film is aiming for a 2026 release, targeting both major festivals and theatrical distribution across Europe and beyond.