Chinese artist and filmmaker Sun Xun’s “Magic Atlas” has become the first animated feature selected for competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival, a distinction he had not anticipated. Speaking to Variety, Sun described the project as a combination of artistic disciplines, with animation serving as a label for its form rather than a complete account of what he set out to create.
Developed over ten years, the film unfolds in Luocha, an empire built around coal mining where flight is prohibited. A festival held every 60 years wipes out the population’s memory of the preceding era. An imprisoned magician encounters an orphan boy and hands him the Magic Atlas, a book that directs the child toward history the empire has sought to suppress.
Woodblock prints, ink painting and vivid colors shape the film’s visual language. Rather than relying on a conventional plot to explain everything, it conveys meaning through images informed by artistic traditions across cultures and historical periods. During production, Sun examined Dunhuang murals, Song dynasty painting and calligraphy, as well as imagery from other cultures.
Sun said the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and changes in his own life, including his conversion to Buddhism, influenced the work. Financing it required all his savings. Gallery closures during the pandemic cut off his art sales, prompting him to seek buyers directly and borrow money to sustain production. He described “Magic Atlas” as his “all-in moment,” a defining project into which he poured everything.
The long production also carried personal stakes. Sun wanted to complete the film before his child grew up and while his parents were alive, but his father died a year before it was finished. The filmmaker said he combined cultural and political influences to explore divisions around the world, rather than responding to a single event. Mythology and references to ancient civilizations, including the pyramids, also appear in the film.
Sun’s approach challenges the emphasis on storytelling as a means of packaging films commercially. He said cinema should convey a state of being, and named Andrei Tarkovsky, particularly his 1983 film “Nostalghia,” and the late Hungarian director Béla Tarr among filmmakers he admires for their sincerity in approaching existence.
He acknowledged that viewers may face difficulties engaging with “Magic Atlas,” but said its decade of development had given it depth. Completing a personally important work, rather than satisfying every viewer, was his priority. Exhibitions related to the film are planned for the U.S. and Singapore, although locations and dates have not been announced.
Sun has also started another feature, “All or Nothing,” whose Mandarin title, “Fuyou,” translates as “Mayfly.” Continuing within the world of “Magic Atlas,” it will shift from forgetting as a broad theme to one individual’s experience of memory loss. Sun said he shot its opening image at an exhibition space in Hangzhou and hopes to complete the film within two years.
