Tokyo Competition's First Animated Feature Was Sun Xun's All-In Bet

Chinese artist and filmmaker Sun Xun never expected “Magic Atlas” to become the first animated feature selected for the Tokyo International Film Festival’s competition.

“I never thought of ‘Magic Atlas’ as an animated film. To me, it brings together many art forms. Animation is simply the label we use for its form. I’m glad people at TIFF understood the effort I put into it,” Sun tells Variety.

“Magic Atlas,” a decade in the making, is set in Luocha, a coal-mining empire where flying is forbidden. Every 60 years, a festival leaves the population unable to remember the era that came before. After a magician is arrested, he meets an orphan boy in prison and gives him the Magic Atlas. The book points the boy toward a past the empire has tried to erase.

The film moves between woodblock prints, ink painting and vivid color. Its images often do the work that a conventional plot might spell out, drawing on art and visual traditions from different periods and cultures.

Sun says the film was shaped by global events, including the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, as well as personal changes such as his conversion to Buddhism. He put all his savings into the project. When galleries shut down during the pandemic, his art sales dried up. He says he had to find buyers himself and take out loans to keep the film going.

“In my own artistic thinking, I believe every creator should have one ‘all-in’ moment in their life: to make a defining work that takes everything out of them. For me, ‘Magic Atlas’ was that all-in moment,” he says. “I hoped to finish it before my child grew up and while my parents were still alive. Sadly, my father passed away a year before the film was completed.”

Rather than comment on any one event, Sun says, he drew on different cultural and political influences to reflect the divisions he sees around the world. He also brought in images of ancient civilizations, including the pyramids, alongside mythological elements.

“Film cannot address reality directly, but it can take a wider view. It can express how we understand the world and what we are curious about,” he says.

Asked whether films need to explain their stories clearly, Sun says: “I’m actually against ‘story.’ I don’t mean that films shouldn’t have stories. I object to films that emphasize story for the sake of packaging and commercial purposes. As an art form, film should express a state of being.”

Sun names Andrei Tarkovsky, citing 1983’s “Nostalghia,” and the late Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr as filmmakers he admires. “They are sincere in the way they approach existence. They don’t rely only on imagined narratives. To me, that is the kind of artistic form cinema should have,” he says.

While working on “Magic Atlas,” Sun studied Dunhuang murals, Song dynasty painting and calligraphy, along with imagery from other cultures. Asked if he worries that some viewers might find the film difficult to follow, he says: “There will always be a barrier to entry. Ten years of work naturally gives the film depth. But I made this important work for myself. My goal was to realize it, not to please every viewer.”

Sun says exhibitions connected to “Magic Atlas” are planned in the U.S. and Singapore, though venues and dates have not been unveiled. He has also begun a new feature he calls “All or Nothing,” whose Mandarin title, “Fuyou,” means “Mayfly.” The film will continue the world of “Magic Atlas,” moving from the broad theme of forgetting to an individual experience of memory loss. Sun says he filmed the first shot at an exhibition space in Hangzhou and hopes to finish the feature within two years.