"We have lost touch with the environment"

The animated director’s new and beautiful picture pushes us back to the Irish 18th century and the rebellious magic of the jungle threatened by the English invaders. Tom Moore told us about his unique work and strongly marked the environmental problem.

Welcome to Kilkenny, Southern Ireland, into the seventeenth century. Under the rule of the English invader Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, the townspeople suffocated, while a rebellious magic hid in the surrounding forest … Wolf people, Tom Moore’s beautiful cartoon (read our review here), we liked their previous movies, Brendan and Kells’ secret And The song of the sea. While in Paris, the filmmaker agreed to tell us about his brilliant and unique work, his independent studio built inside the cartoon saloon, in his hometown of Kilkenny, the land of dreaming wolves and inspired artists.

Tom Moore, director Wolf people.

Credit to the cartoon salon

The release of your film has been delayed for a long time due to health crisis. How did you experience this period?
Wolf People The spring of 2020 was almost over when the epidemic hit. I remember a week before it was all over we recorded a part of the soundtrack with French composer Bruno Coulis. He had no covid but he was carrying a little. On the plane, on his return from Ireland, he told us that no one wanted to sit next to him … the first sign of what was happening. Then, like everywhere else, everyone confined themselves, and we worked more or less remotely from our rooms. It was weird and complicated, but it worked. The next question was whether to release the film in the midst of a more thorny, health crisis. It was screened in a trickle for about a year, and was released here and there in China and Japan, even in Ireland, as movie theaters were almost empty, in a very limited way. But most of the viewers we have had so far have seen it online on the Apple TV +. Thank God, today, the French public can finally find it in the movies!