Still patiently waiting for Shuo Feng - Po Zhen Zi (North Wind: Broken Time) to reach the North American market. It's times like this that I keenly feel the loss of the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema as this is clearly one of those films that Joe Chen would move heaven and earth to show at WFAC. A cursory search on the internet reveals announcements back in 2020 for the film while will be produced by Nice Boat Animation. The animation in the trailer is stunning and it appears to be a Chinese historical drama, apparently an adaptation of Shuo Feng Fei Yang by A Nu. And I'm all for it, personally. I love it when different countries develop animated films based on their own history, culture, stories, and art styles. It brings so much more to the community as a whole when foreign animation markets produce something original as opposed to the usual attempts at replicating the latest Disney/Pixar or Anime film. Some of my favorites in the past have been films like South Korea's Leafie a Hen into the Wild and Padak Padak (Swimming to Sea), China's White Snake and Serbia's Technotise, Edit i Ja (Technotise: Edit & I).
If the trailer below is any indication, Shuo Feng - Po Zhen Zi is going to be one of those must see/must have in the collection films. And while it'll be too late for me to talk much about it in my History of Animation Class this semester, I'll enjoy playing the trailer for my students and providing what little I know of the as-yet-to-be-released film.
