Fernando Cortizo’s O Apostolo Being Readied for 2011

O Apóstolo isn’t only the latest animated offering from Spain, but it reflects upon Spain’s rich history in film animation. For some, the more recent “Planet 51” was considered a major landmark due to the budget size, overseas box office, and the huge technical advances it made in rapport to previous films in the genre, but the latest animated offering, which was set to have its world premiere at Sitges International Fantastic Film Festival but has since shifted plans, is a bigger, more detailed, stereoscopic 3D item that is poised to become a benchmark in the animation field.

Directed by newcomer Fernando Cortizo, O Apóstolo is unlike previous films in the genre since it’s one of the first animated films in Spain in which the target audience is for mature audiences. The story and the mood are closely inspired by the likes of Tim Burton’s “The Corpse Bride”, though here, we get the folklore, traditions and history of the north of Spain. The story revolves around an ex-con who arrives to a deserted town looking for a hidden treasure, but what he will find is a coven of dead elderlies looking for souls to trade with the reaper itself.

The rest of the crew working on the film counts with the finest professionals from all around the world. Philip Glass is composing the main theme with the rest of the soundtrack being composed by Xavier Font and Arturo Vaquero. The director of animation is Misha Klein, a renowned North American stop-motion animator who most recently was credited for her work on Henry Selick’s “Coraline”. The group of animators also includes: Pascual Perez, an Aardman collaborator who worked on 2005’s “Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit”.

Along with Pablo Perona, who worked on “The Orphanage” and “Broken Embraces”, the modeling and confection of the puppets will be the responsibility of Javier Aliaga who has worked on such films as “Pan’s Labyrinth”, “Biutiful” and “Perfume”.
Luis Tosar (“Even The Rain” “Cell 211”), Geraldine Chaplin (“Talk To Her”, “La Ciudad Sin Límites”), Celso Bugallo (“Amador”, “The Sea Inside”) and Jorge Sanz (“Amantes”, “Conan”) will be not only lending their talent voices, but their physical appearance as well will be seen in the likeliness of the puppets.