As Conan O’Brien joked during the Oscars, after Latvian film “Flow” won the Best Animated Feature — beating out Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” DreamWorks’ “The Wild Robot” and Aardman’s “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” — the “ball’s in your court, Estonia.”
And while Estonia has yet to reveal a charming animated feature all its own, Turkey is responding with its own adorable offering.
American studio Rising Tides Films and Turkish studio 9D Medya will launch a long-term collaboration in March with the Los Angeles premiere event for 9D Medya and TRT’s animated film “Smart Rabbit Momo: The Big Chase.”
“The future of animation is cross-cultural collaboration,” said Mustafa Karayer, founder of 9D Medya and the film’s producer, in a Tuesday statement. “By partnering with Rising Tides Films, we are bridging Turkish storytelling with Hollywood’s expertise — to make fresh, diverse animation for audiences everywhere.”
“Turkey has rapidly become a global force in entertainment, and animation is our next frontier,” Karayer added. Turkey is the third-largest exporter of scripted series worldwide, behind only the U.S. and the U.K. “Great stories transcend borders,” added executive producer Sadia Ashraf, founder of Rising Tides Films and writer-director of the upcoming film “Unmarriageable.” “With our expertise in the U.S. market and 9D Medya’s innovation in animation, we are shaping a new era of filmmaking — one that connects cultures to young audiences hungry for globally appealing storytelling.”
“Smart Rabbit Momo: The Big Chase” will first debut in March at a private event at the DGA in Los Angeles, where it will be introduced to international distributors, studio executives and industry leaders before its official world cinema release in Turkey on March 28.
The film “follows the adventures of Momo, an inventive smartass rabbit, who embarks on a daring quest to save her friend Timtim, a gifted violin virtuoso, from capture, setting off a thrilling, high-stakes chase from a cozy woods to the big bad city.”
Mahmut Hasan, the film’s 25-year-old director, explained: “Animation has the power to transport us back to childhood wonder. [The film] is a nostalgic yet innovative journey — made in Turkey but for the world’s kids.”
The computer-animated movie is based on an animated TRT Kids TV series by 9D Medya and the first of its kind to emerge from Kahramanmaraş. What makes the locally produced film even more impressive is that it follows the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that took place on Feb. 6, 2023.
“The earthquake took away our loved ones and razed our city to rubble,” Krayer shared. “Our team faced one hardship after another, including COVID — yet we refused to let adversity define us. We pressed on to complete this film in four years. We are proud to present a film made by the unwavering spirit of Kahramanmaraş.”
