Gwen and the Book of Sand

"Why search the sand for answers? It has told us everything,” whispers Roseline (voiced by Michel Robin), the 173-year old desert nomad narrator of French director Jean-François Laguionie’s hauntingly poetic animated feature of life after the apocalypse, where the few hardy survivors walk on stilts from well to well, scorpions glow like lanterns, and the mysterious Makou drops giant everyday objects – forks, eyeglasses, bathtubs – from the skies. Into this desolate science-fiction landscape, part-Dune, part-Fury Road, emerges the story’s teenage heroine, Gwen (voiced by Lorella Di Cicco), who refuses to stay silent and hide in the shadows – and whose love for teenage boy Nokmoon, kidnapped by the Makou and its followers, will drive her and Roseline on an epic journey across the endless sands. A sublime and breathtaking masterpiece of world animation, painted in remarkable gouache images, Gwen is on par with René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet, Hayao Miyazaki’s…